EB5 Investors Magazine Volume 4 Issue 1 | Page 9

Special Interview with Dr. Winner Xing by EB5 Investors Magazine Staff Dr. Winner Xing of Chinese immigration agency Worldway Group spoke with EB5 Investors Magazine about which concerns he’s heard from Chinese investors about the EB-5 program, what they look for in an investment opportunity, and how Worldway continues to support investors once they’ve moved to a new country. EB5 Investors Magazine: What is the most popular immigrant destination for your clients? Winner Xing: We have four (specialties): the United States, Canada, Europe, and the British Commonwealth. The United States and Canada have larger application amounts. EB5 Investors Magazine: Since you’ve been in this industry for a long time, what are your clients’ biggest concerns about the EB-5 program? Just based on your daily connection and communication with clients. Winner Xing: There are two. The first is the risk of their investment. Clients are worried about their investment money because the investment is by nature under risk. Sometimes EB-5 projects have some problems. The second is worry about its job creation risk, because at the beginning the clients only obtain a conditional green card. They can remove the condition only when the job creation fulfills the program’s requirement. So they know that whether they complete the job creation requirement decides whether they get the permanent green card. They know that the risk of job creation is the risk of their green card. Recently, we found that with the EB-5 program extension, there are more and more applicants. So more and more petitions accumulate in (USCIS), and the waiting time is extended. So (our) clients now have a third concern, which is the petition waiting time. If the EB-5 application waiting time is extended, it has impact on both their investment and their future immigration plan. evaluate the investment subject by checking their history, experience, capability, and reputation. The second thing investors care about is the investment structure. It includes both the project cover rate and EB-5 fund percentage. In general, if the EB-5 fund takes a smaller percentage and the cover rate is lower, the risk to the investors will be relatively lower. Some projects have high cover rate, consisting of more than 90 percent bank loans, fund loans, and EB-5 loans. These kinds of projects could bother the investors. This is the second pr oblem investors are concerned about. Then the third issue investors (are concerned) about is job creation. The biggest concerns are the job calculation method, and the cushion job numbers. What the investors know is an estimated job creation number when they start the application. The number could be taken into consideration as long as its deemed to be reasonable. However, after two years a real job creation report needs to be submitted. There is always a difference between expectation and reality. If the cushion job number – the part of the expected job creation number that exceeds the required job creation number—is higher, the investor will feel safer. Of course this cushion can’t be endlessly high, after all there is total job creation volume. In most cases, if the cushion job creation number reaches 30 percent higher than the actual required number, investors will feel safer. The higher this percentage is, the better. In terms of the calculation method, it is riskier for operational jobs because there are more uncertain factors that influence the future operation. So depending too much on operational job numbers would make the investors worried. EB5 Investors Magazine: As you said before, the two consistent concerns are investment risk and job creation risk. As a migration agency, the solution is due diligence, right? What do you think are the three most important things in project underwriting? Winner Xing: The most important thing is the selection of the project. Who is the investment subject? This is the key. No matter how well a due diligence is conducted, it is just a security lock. Any due diligence method has its limitations. The investors care about who is the investing party. We will EB5 Investors Magazine: What kind of project is Worldway seeking now? Winner Xing: We do not have a preference. Among the projects we’ve been promoting are hotel, apartment and new energy projects. We did quite a few new energy projects already. Specifically we did solar energy projects, and had success. So we don’t have preference for project type. However, we do consider the prosperity of an industry. For example, now the petroleum industry is not prosperous, and investors (are wary of those projects). So if there is a petroleum project, we Continued to page 8 WWW.EB5INVESTORS.COM 7