Brazilian EB-5
Investors Rise
to Largest Group
of Contributors
Outside Southeast
Asia
Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest source
of EB-5 investors, pouring $79 million into
EB-5 projects while receiving 150 visas last
year.
By EB5 Investors Magazine Staff
A
s a tenured professor at a well-regarded public university, 44-year-
old Erika Nogueira de Andrade Stupiello never planned on leaving
Brazil — but thanks to her son Bruno’s love of airplanes, she’s now
reconsidering her options. After the 15-year-old set his heart on a
career in aviation, it became clear he would need to study in the U.S.
in order to achieve his dreams. That’s why last April, Stupiello and her
husband, an ethanol industry executive, invested $500,000 in the Surf
Club Four Seasons Hotel & Residences development in Miami Beach,
and filed the paperwork to begin an EB-5 application.
“We’re doing this for him,” Stupiello says. “It’s like giving him his
inheritance ahead of time.” Bruno is already in Florida, completing high
school on an F1 visa, Stupiello explains. Getting a green card will allow
him to win scholarships, attend college in the U.S., and perhaps one day
join the US Air Force. It also means Stupiello won’t have to fret about him
leaving their home in São José do Rio Preto, a peaceful provincial city, to
study in one of Brazil's more dangerous major cities.
“He’ll be able to study in a good city and be safe, instead of studying in
a big city in Brazil, where I’d be very worried about violence,” Stupiello
explains. Such stories are increasingly common in Brazil, where
awareness of the EB-5 program has increased sharply in recent years.
Between 1990 and 2007, only 14 Brazilian investors received EB-5 visas,
according to an IIUSA report. Now, however, Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest
source of EB-5 investors, and the biggest contributor outside southeast
Asia. In fiscal 2016 alone, Brazilians poured $79 million into EB-5 projects,
and received 150 visas, according to State Department data, a more than
fourfold increase than the previous year.
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