EB5 Investors Magazine Volume 3 Issue 3 | Page 75

Jose count only so much). According to one EB-5 industry leader in Vietnam, “EB-5 is not suitable for those who look for lifechanging opportunity. Many Vietnamese people misunderstand the program as an opportunity to come to America and become wealthy through investment. In fact, the main purpose of the program is to help fund projects and create jobs instead of making investors rich.”13 Effects of Upcoming Legislative Reforms on the Current EB-5 Market in Vietnam Vietnamese investors struggle to prove the lawful source of their EB-5 investment funds, probably even more so than EB-5 investors from China. If new legislation for the EB-5 Regional Center Program increases the minimum investment amount, this difficulty would increase. There are many wealthy Vietnamese who may be interested in EB-5, but who might not be qualified due to the lack of evidence regarding source of funds. Nevertheless, the EB-5 program is predicted to grow rapidly in the next few years. With the U.S. Department of State developing a more positive and realistic attitude in issuing visitor visas to Vietnamese nationals, potential investors can now more easily travel to the United States. to perform their own project due diligence. Visiting gives them an opportunity to learn about the projects, the country, and be more confident in moving forward with an EB-5 investment. Brandon Meyer is an EB-5 immigration attorney and principal of the Meyer Law Group, a full service immigration law firm with offices in Solana Beach, Calif. and Stamford, Conn. Meyer routinely works on cases involving EB-5 and regional center representation, among other areas of immigration law. He visits Vietnam frequently and has built a strong EB-5 practice there. Brandon Meyer According to “Raw I-526 Dat a” compiled by the Association to Invest in the USA, USCIS approved the following number of I-526 petitions filed by Chinese investors: 1) 2011-921; 2) 2012- 2873; and, 3) 2013- 3,147. Comparable numbers for Vietnam for the years 2011-2013 were 12, 24, and 23 by comparison, not truly presaging the surge to come. See http:// member.iiusa.org/resources/by/person/208575176?access=371, last accessed October 27, 2015. 1 See Halper, Stefan, The Beijing Consensus: Legitimizing Authoritarianism in Our Time: Basic Books, 2012 and Bell, Daniel A., The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy: Princeton University Press, 2015. 2 See David Shambaugh, “The Coming Chinese Crackup,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2015. See http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-comingchinese-crack-up-1425659198, last accessed November 1, 2015. Dr. Shambaugh, who I studied under at George Washington University, predicts the beginning of the end for the Chinese Communist Party, and also notes that China’s economic elite is fleeing for the exits, which explains why EB-5 is so heavily dominated by investors from China. 3 See Gabriel Wildau and Chris Giles “Beijing furthers efforts to halt slowdown” Financial Times, October 24-25, 2015, p.1 and Keira Lu Huang “China’s growth target never set in stone: premier” South China Morning Post, October 26, 2015, p.1 4 During his October 2015 presentation at an IIUSA conference, State Department visa office official Charles Oppenheim presented data showing that Vietnamese citizens were issued 280 EB-5 visas for the period dating October 2014-September 2015 (the period of the US government’s 2015 fiscal year), a number over 200 percent higher than the third-highest producing EB-5 investor country of Taiwan (139 EB-5 visas issued for the same period). See http://member.iiusa.org/system/files/attachments/ EB-5%20Visa%20Demand%20-%20An%20Update%20from%20 the%20Department%20of%20State.pdf, last accessed November 1, 2015. 5 Conclusion As I drove into Hanoi from the airport in March 2011, I was struck by the similarities with Beijing during my first visit there in August 1994. The road to Beijing was lightly traveled, and agricultural/unimproved land lined both sides of the road. The trip to the center of town was long. In August 1994, the well-known EB-5 landmarks of the Lufthansa Center/ Kempinski Hotel were the outer limits of Beijing. Now, this area is essentially mid-Beijing. The old farm and wasteland has now been replaced with high-rise apartments, office buildings and hotels (and a golf course). The reason for making this comparison is to point out that Vietnam feels much like China did 15-20 years ago. I imagine that the EB-5 business in China 15-20 years ago was the same as Vietnam’s is today: blossoming interest in the program, coupled with a relative lack of understanding how the program works, with only a few brokers trying to organize the marketplace. I predict that the EB-5 market in Vietnam will follow roughly the same development trajectory as the EB-5 marketplace developed in China, in the same way that Vietnam will follow China’s overall economic development trajectory. While it might be unrealistic to expect Vietnam to eventually become 80 percent of the EB-5 market, as China represents, it is not unrealistic for Vietnam to eventually settle somewhere between five to ten percent of the EB-5 market. For any regional center interested in diversifying its distribution channels, Vietnam is a market than can no longer be overlooked. ★ See Laurie Burkitt, “China’s Leaders Scrap One-Child Policy,” The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2015, p. A7. According to Ms. Burkitt, “China will abandon its one-child policy, perhaps the most notorious of the Communist Party’s intrusions into Chinese lives, amid a looming demographic crunch that threatens the long-term health of the world’s second-largest economy.” 6 See https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ rankorder/2004rank.html, last accessed October 27, 2015. On a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, China has a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $12,900 in 2014, which ranks China 113 out of 230 nations, just behind Macedonia, but just ahead of the Dominican Republic. 7 8 Discussions with anonymous EB-5 marketing specialist in Vietnam. See “Long-Term Demographic Trends: Reshaping the Geopolitical Landscape,” p.47. https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/ Demo_Trends_For_Web.pdf, last accessed October 27, 2015. 9 Chinese invasion of Vietnam has occurred numerous times in the last 2,000 years, with tensions persisting between the two countries today. See http://asiasociety.org/vietnam-0, last accessed November 1, 2015. 10 See Jane Perlez, “Shadow of Brutal ’79 War Darkens Vietnam’s View of China Relations,” The New York Times, July 6, 2014, p. A4. 11 ICEF Monitor. (2015, September 07). Challenges in Vietnamese higher education contributing to demand for study abroad. Retrieved from http://monitor.icef.com/2015/09/challenges-in-vietnamese-higher-education-contributing-to-demand-for-study-abroad/, last accessed September 15, 2015. 12 Thu Ngan. (2014, August 6). Nhieu dai gia Viet quan tam dau tu dinh cu My. See http://kinhdoanh.vnexpress.net/tin-tuc/doanh-nghiep/nhieudai-gia-viet-quan-tam-dau-tu-dinh-cu-my-3026544.html, last accessed September 15, 2015. 13 WWW.EB5INVESTORS.COM 73