as and gateway cities and states experiencing significant economic activity as a result of immigrant investment.
The identification of a statistically significant relationship by Smith( 2015) between the presence of immigrant populations and the EB-5 program offers further insight on the presence of immigrant growth machines in the United States.
The EB-5 program supports the immigrant growth machine due to its ability to serve as gap financing for economic development plans across the country. Difficulties in accessing affordable financing for economic development initiatives, particularly after the financial crisis of 2008, has led real estate developers and community stakeholders to partner with immigrant investors and foreign economic developers to secure financing through the EB-5 program.
New York’ s City’ s Brooklyn Navy Yard
This financing not only helps diversify capital in economic development plans, it also serves as a key element of finance in real estate deals. A prominent example of this has been seen in New York City’ s Brooklyn Navy Yard, in which EB-5 capital has been combined with government investment to finance the Navy Yard’ s largest expansion since World War II, bringing thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of investment to Brooklyn. It is viewed as a national model for successful implementation of EB-5 capital in public-private partnerships.
The success of the Brooklyn Navy Yard’ s development plans is a clear example of the immigrant growth machine’ s ability to spur job creation and foreign investment, and of the EB-5 program’ s ability to support the immigrant growth machine by providing a meaningful contribution to the capital stack of large scale economic development projects.
A key component of the immigrant growth machine is its ability to stimulate entrepreneurship and increased economic activity. Innovative economic development programs, such as the EB-5 program, have supported immigrant entrepreneurship and economic activity in the immigrant growth machine.
At the time of this writing, Chinese developers have been involved with nearly half of all of large-scale real estate deals in downtown Los Angeles( Piersen, 2016). These developers are building skyscrapers and residential units, with a large number of buyers of the residential units expected to be Chinese. In fact, Chinese buyers account for 12 percent of all foreign citizens who purchased homes in the United States in 2014( Kim, 2015), with more than half of these Chinese buyers purchasing homes in California. The infusion of foreign capital into development plans, and the marketing of development projects to foreign nationals, has spurred construction, economic development and job growth in the immigrant growth machine.
Marshalling Resources of Economic Development Community
Perhaps most importantly, the EB-5 program is an important component of the immigrant growth machine due to its ability to marshal the resources of the economic development community, such as how the aforementioned Navy Yard project was able to leverage EB-5 investment to raise capital from governmental sources. This is not limited to the Northeast or the West Coast, as the economic development community in cities in the industrial rust belt, such as Cleveland and Pittsburgh, has been seeking out EB-5 investment for urban renewal projects and gap financing. Large-scale projects, funded by EB-5 investors with hopes of transforming urban areas, have been supported by developers, city planners and community groups because
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EB5 INVESTORS MAGAZINE