The EB-5 visa program got a five-day extension Friday when the House of Representatives passed a bill to keep the government running until Dec. 16—a big plus for anyone getting Christmas gifts through the post office.
The US grants 10,000 green cards a year to foreigners who invest a minimum of $500k and 10 jobs in the economy.
Big developers love the EB-5: it lets their Chinese buyers—who dominate the program—stay in the states once they buy their city property, The Real Deal reports.
Lawmakers are planning on upping that price of US residency to between $800k and $1.2M—those green cards aren’t cheap. But it looks like they’ll have to figure out the rest of the $1.15T budget first.
Other proposed changes include preserving 2,000 of the visas for rural investors, so city-dwelling Chinese would compete for a smaller share of the EB-5 pie. [TRD]
