With the value of the American dollar down at the moment, investing in the U.S. can be an attractive option for foreign nationals due to favorable exchange rates. An EB-5 regional center in Florida is seeking foreign investors to take advantage of this situation.
The Birch Leaf 31 Miami Regional Center is helping to expand the University of Miami Medical School and is using the EB-5 visa program to help raise a portion of the funds required to complete the project.
The EB-5 visa program gives foreign nationals a unique way to earn their U.S. green card. By investing $1 million in an American business, the foreign investor begins the relatively easy process of becoming eligible for a green card. After that initial step has been completed, all that is required is that 10 jobs are created or preserved as a result of the investment.
The regional center program was created to help foreign nationals invest in U.S. businesses without having to spend as much time directly managing the project. These centers can be government agencies but are more often private entrepreneurs or corporations.
The Birch Leaf 31 Miami Regional Center may only be one of the nearly 100 regional centers in the country, but there is a lot that makes it stand out, primarily the fact that it is partnered with a major university. This partnership potentially provides the regional center with a tremendous advantage, namely that the school, state, and community most likely have a great deal of interest in seeing the project succeed because it would help the whole area.
The 1.74 acre Building One site is part of an 8 acre site on which the UM Life Science and Technology Park is located and is anticipated to contain potentially up to 1.65 million square feet of developed space, approximately 75% of which is intended for biomedical research and development uses along with supporting activities. Another thing that makes the Birch Leaf regional center unique is that while attracting EB-5 investors is important to the project, it is not as essential as it might be for other regional centers. Indeed, the total cost of the project is estimated to be $107 million and only $20 million is expected to come from foreign investors.
Aiding Birch Leaf in its expansion of the University’s Medical School is Exclusive Visas; an EB-5 consulting firm that specializes in helping foreign nationals find projects and regional centers that meet their investment needs.
The Birch Leaf regional center is expecting to create some 2,000 jobs with their latest project, but only 400 will be needed to satisfy the EB-5 requirements for all the foreign investors involved.