THE BASICS OF EB-5
have good supporting documents, including revenue and
expense pro forma and market study, having a strong EB-5
team in your corner—including an experienced business
plan writer and economist—is an invaluable necessity.
The main role of the EB-5 business plan writer is to take
your business model and present in a way that is fully
compliant with USCIS requirements. This in turn will allow
for a successful capital contribution and immigration
process by the investor. Matter of Ho is the precedent
case study that your EB-5 business plan will be evaluated
against and it is the writer’s job to make sure your
business plan is presented in a way that is compliant with
that standard.
If you are unsure of your business model or the market
conditions, the writer can also help to correctly shape
your plan, but if the plan is too speculative, you may
want to reconsider a more institutional regional center
project offering, especially if immigration is the primary
motivation. While a business plan writer is a necessity for
both a direct or regional center EB-5 compliant business
plan, you should also consider the benefit of having an
economic analysis/job creation study performed for your
project.
If you use a regional center model, you are allowed to
use the jobs associated with direct, indirect and induced
business activities of the project. These jobs typically
come from two categories. The first one is construction:
you can count certain costs associated with construction
activities to create jobs.
To go back to the example above, it is conceivable that
a regional center project that contemplates several
Korean BBQ’s would create enough jobs via construction
expenditures alone (including FF&E, tenant improvements,
etc.) to support an EB-5 investor. There is typically much
less risk involved with counting jobs from construction
expenditures than with providing evidence that your
project has the ten qualifying full-time employees/job
positions at the time the investor files for their permanent
residence.
The other activity from which to demonstrate creation of
EB-5-eligible jobs, within the context of a regional center
project, is operations. Similar to a direct EB-5 project,
you can use direct hires as an input to the model. In the
regional center example, not only would you gain credit
for the 10 full-time employees, but also for the indirect
and induced jobs associated with the project. Jobs from
operations can be evidenced by direct hires, but with the
help of an economist, you could instead use revenues to
calculate the direct, indirect, and induced jobs through
economic modeling. An important consideration to this
option is that you must be confident that you will hit your
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