Erika Nogueira de Andrade Stupiello with her son Bruno and her husband.
“In 2012, the most common question I’d get was ’Is this
legal?’” says Renata Castro, managing partner at Castro
Legal Group in Pompano Beach, Florida. “They thought
it was some kind of scheme.” But recently the EB-5
program has gained much wider recognition.
“Now, I’m getting more
sophisticated questions about the
structure, the jobs created, and the
likelihood of getting a permanent
green card,” she says. “Brazil is
becoming a much more mature
market.” The upsurge in EB-5
activity is the product of Brazil’s
economic boom and bust, says
Luciana Zamith Fischer, a Miami
immigration lawyer and former
regional center principal.
As a result, large numbers of Brazilians have both the
resources and the motivation to use the EB-5 program.
“People feel the prosperity from 2010 should have
translated to better services and infrastructure,” she
says. “People are disillusioned, and they want to get out.”
"...Brazil is the
world’s fifth-largest
source of EB-5
investors, and the
biggest contributor
outside southeast
Asia...."
In 2010, Brazil’s economy surged
7.5 percent, the highest rate
since the mid-1980s, but growth
has slipped steadily since then, and in both 2015 and 2016
the economy contracted by more than 3.5 percent. That
means many Brazilians who got rich during the good
years are now seeing their country dragged down by
an economic crisis, political scandals and rising crime,
Zamith Fischer says.
Around 8,000 millionaires left
Brazil in 2016, the third-highest
outflow worldwide, according
to a New World Wealth report,
with Sao Paolo alone losing
more than 3,000 millionair