EB5 Investors Magazine: Please tell us about yourself.
What is your professional background? How did
you get involved in the immigration business?
David Chen: After graduating from Shanghai’s Fudan
University Law School in 1992 with a specialization in international economic law, I started practicing law as a business
litigation attorney in Guangzhou, South China. I did not
begin learning about immigration matters until 1997—as a
consequence of Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty, the demand for immigration extended to mainland China, especially
from Guangdon province. Because of my legal practice, I was
connected with many attorneys outside China, including some
immigration attorneys from Canada who were eager to expand
their client base in China. They suggested I should make an
attempt at providing immigration consulting services. So, I set
about establishing the first office of Visas Consulting Group in
Guangzhou.
In 1999, we shifted our primary focus from Guandong province to Shanghai. Aside from the fact that we are more familiar
with Shanghai clients’ “style,” Shanghai and East China had
more immigration opportunities at the time.
After moving our headquarters to Shanghai, we have
successively opened four other offices in Jiangsu – Zhejiang
area. We now have nine offices total, including Beijing, while
the Shanghai office has over 100 employees assigned to four
departments: marketing, consulting, documentation and
administration.
EB5 Investors Magazine: What is the scope of Visas
Consultants? How many clients do you place per year?
David Chen: Every year we have a few hundred EB-5
investors. The second biggest immigrant program for us is the
Canadian program. Since the reopened Federal Immigrant
Investor Program has a higher risk, the Quebec program is
currently the most popular option. However, the processing
time is now longer than that of the EB-5 program. We handle
some cases for Portugal and Hungary too. We try to cover all the
investment immigrant programs, including the programs like
Malta, St. Kitts and Nevis, the United Kingdom and Australia,
etc.
EB5 Investors Magazine: EB-5 investors often have
very specific motivations. Why would an investor
choose to immigrate to Portugal, for example?
David Chen: Some people are actually interested in developing small businesses in Southern Europe. But, for most people,
they just want to get a visa—that is all. The residency requirement for European countries is not so strict, so the investors do
not need to relocate right away. They keep the visa just in case
one day they have to leave China. Also, most Chinese investors
feel more comfortable investing in real estate.
EB5 Investors Magazine: How many EB-5
projects do you usually promote per year?
David Chen: Normally we are committed to three to four
projects per year. We do not like to take too many projects,
because we always put in a lot of effort to conduct due diligence
reports, especially for the projects introduced by new regional
center partners. We will spend more time studying their
background and track record. If the project is brought in by
a regional center we have been working with, we can skip the
background-check process and directly start determining if the
project is secure by looking into key factors like job creation,
capital structure and business plan. In that case, we still have to
evaluate each project very carefully. The average time we spend
on one project is four months. Of course, if some projects have
tight timelines, we will try to speed up the process accordingly.
The bottom line is that we need to do a thorough due diligence
for each project, which is very time-consuming. We cannot
afford to do that for too many projects.
EB5 Investors Magazine: Since you only do three to four
projects per year, would you be interested in small-size
projects? How many options would you present to a client?
David Chen: The minimum number of investors we can
accept is 40. Normally we want to have at least two different
options for the clients; that being said, for most cases we will
not take two identical projects at the same time.
EB5 Investors Magazine: Based on your case volume, I am
sure you have plenty of deal flow. Does that mean you will
push away new people who want to set up meetings with
you? What is the best way for a project to approach you?
David Chen: To be honest, we do not want too many people
phoning us, because we can only pick out three to four deals
every year. We would still meet with people introduced/referred
by someone we are familiar with, though. For example, an
immigration attorney or U.S. banker vR