Build a Bridge; Get a Green Card
The nation’s deteriorating surface transportation infrastructure cost American households and businesses $130 billion in 2010, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. Washington state is taking advantage of one potentially lucrative source to help fix the problem by offering foreign citizens opportunities to earn green cards to live and work in the United States in exchange for an investment in public projects.
Already, 95 would-be immigrants, mostly Chinese, have invested nearly $48 million in a company set up to buy bonds funding the replacement for the aging State Route 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington. If the deal receives final approval, the 95 would be eligible to apply for green cards to live and work in America. The innovative deal is believed to be one of the first times the federal government’s Immigrant Investor Program, also known as EB-5, has been used to fund a public infrastructure project using municipal bonds anywhere in the United States.
“Purchasing bonds for the 520 bridge makes sense not only for our local community here in Western Washington, but also for our investors from all around the world,” says Mike Mattox of the Washington Regional Center, the company behind the 520 deal.
Washington has long been a hub for EB-5 investment, with 12 regional centers in the state licensed to set up projects and market them to foreigners. One local company, Seattle’s American Life Inc., has financed more than 40 real estate developments using EB-5 equity investments, including a Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Pioneer Square and a six-story LEED Gold Certified office building in SoDo. In SoDo alone, American Life owns 38 properties with some 2.2 million square feet of space. The company is responsible for about 10 per cent of all EB-5 investment nationwide.
But American Life’s founder and CEO, Henry Liebman, says deals like the 520 bond purchase threaten the future of traditional design-and-build projects. “If an investor has the chance to buy a bond backed with the full faith and credit of the state of Washington,” he asks, “why would he give a construction company $500,000?”
The EB-5 program was set up in 1990 to stimulate the United States economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors. Applicants are required to invest $500,000 in a business that creates or preserves 10 full-time jobs in a rural area or a region of high unemployment. If the business and jobs are still there after two
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