February 2024 Newsletter

Project updates

 

One of our deals, Westover, successfully received a project application (I-956F) approval from USCIS on January 17. The investors in that deal have requested expedited processing of their I-526Es due to the national interest nature of the investment (addiction treatment services).

Our latest expedited investment opportunity is a Phase 2 development of All Points North (“APN”), a leading behavioral health company with a facility located outside Vail, Colorado. We are raising EB-5 capital to expand this facility, which is currently operating at full capacity. APN is a rapidly growing company that generated $52m in revenue last year and has raised over $100m from private equity investors.

Thanks to the investment’s humanitarian and national interest nature, APN investors can request USCIS to expedite their petitions. As a rural investment, it also qualifies investors for immediately available reserved visas. Investors that don’t have the funds available can file with a partial investment amount and fund the balance within 12 months.  This allows EB-5 applicants to get the process started while they gather the remaining funds.

EB-5 Related News

 

Thanks to a FOIA request, the American Immigrant Investor Alliance (AIIA) released a very helpful update on EB-5 filings under the RIA through end Oct. It shows a significant pickup in rural filings, although the rural category still only accounted for half the number of filings (1,093) vs urban TEA filings (2,185). Given that rural has double the number of visas available (5,085 vs 2,542 in FY24) the demand/supply situation for rural seems much more favorable than urban TEA. This has important implications for visa availability in the next year or two. Read more here.

USCIS recently announced significant increases in filing fees effective April 1st. The new I-526E filing fee will increase to $11,160, representing an increase of nearly $7,500. As projects gear up to enter the market, they are facing a substantial hike in their project application fee (I-956F) to $47,695, a jump of almost $30,000. Across our various Regional Centers, we are witnessing a rush of projects planning to come to market prior to these impending cost escalations.

As of September last year, 231 new projects had already been launched. Based on the strong pipeline we’ve seen since then, we’d estimate there are probably 300+ projects in the market looking to raise capital. The surge has been spurred by tighter domestic capital markets and a renewed interest in EB-5 under the RIA. We’re not just seeing the typical real estate projects either, but a wide variety of rural and urban projects including in manufacturing, movies, agriculture, mining and behavioural health.

Team Travels

 

In the coming month our intrepid team will be attending events in Latin America, China and Korea. Please reach out if you’d like to meet us at any of these places.

Barranquilla, Colombia (Mar 1)

Lima, Peru (Mar 5)

Sao Paulo, Brazil (Mar 7)

Hangzhou, China (March 18-21)

Korea (March 22-30)

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