EB-5 Investor Testimonial:
Kishore from India

Hi, Sam. It is good to come here and share my experience with EB5AN. So I am from India, and I moved to the U.S. in 2016 on L-1A visa. It was a company transfer. And later on, I moved to H-1B visa. So I’m here about you can say nine years now, and yeah, that is my background.

For the last nine years, I am with the same company, and I am basically a software engineer. I have not faced much of the immigration challenges, but since H-1B is a little uncertain and my priority date is 2018, and which I don’t think that I’m going to get a Green Card in coming maybe 10 years or more. People say hundreds of years, but I assume for sure not in 10 years. I have a kid, and I want him to study here in the U.S., so I think this is the best opportunity for me to get a Green Card, through EB-5 visa program.

Yeah, definitely employment benefit, because my wife wants to start her own business. She’s currently also employed as H-1B. And it is very dicey to get EADs and to renew the EAD and all those things, and she wants to start her business. So I thought overall this is a very good program so that we can get full independence without relying on our employer to continue and stay in U.S. and take on new different paths basically.

Since I have lot of experience in software, maybe in future I want to do something more. So that is one reason. Another reason is in future if I want to start a business—I don’t want to continue my work—I can do that and stay in the U.S. So there are a lot of benefits actually.

So I was already on L-1B visa, and then it’s difficult to go to L-1A visa because you are already on L-1B visa. And H-1B visa I was already on. So I did not see a lot of options, because for me it was like this was the only option available, EB-5, or I have to just stay on the EB-2 line, which I am currently on.

Yeah. This is a very interesting question, because I came to know about EB-5 program long back, maybe 2022 or 2021. But I used to see that there’s a lot of backlog, and then it just kept out of my mind that, okay, there’s something called EB-5 rural and high-employment area where you can get EB-5 visa quickly.

Recently, I think three, four months back, I started watching some videos about EB-5. EB5AN, they have so much information online available, like on YouTube, that I came to know, okay, with this, you can actually get your visa quickly. So yeah, it’s not a long journey for me to decide on EB-5, but I came to know about EB-5 quite late, that you can get in this category your Green Card earlier.

So after that I reached to … As per your videos, first, I started looking for a good attorney in EB-5 area. And once we decided on our attorney, we started exploring regional centers. And yeah, that was the steps.

So we did not interview a lot. Maybe it was three, four attorney only. But with your videos on EB5AN, I could see how attorneys are … which are associated with EB5AN, so I can gauge the questions and what kind of questions I need to ask to attorney. There were variety of attorneys available, and we had some preference that we wanted to hire an attorney whom we can directly talk to or send a message and get a reply soon, very responsive attorney. So that’s why we selected Anahita George. And she’s working with EB5AN for a long time I guess, and she has a lot of experience in EB-5 filing.

It was very smooth process working with Anahita. So the full process took around four weeks for us. And definitely EB5AN videos helped us to prepare few of the documents, which really help us to process the documentation very fast. Some documents were missing, which we came to know once we started working on source of one document. But it was a smooth process, and we finished it in one month.

So Anahita is very good at that, and I will really recommend her. So even at 10:00 in the night, if I send a SMS that “Okay, what is expected out of this requirement?” she will respond back at 10:00 or in the early-morning hours. She is very responsive, and she replies very quickly about all the queries. She always tried to make sure that we understand the process and we are well-prepared what is expected in the future and what is going to come and what all documentations are a must and why it is required.

So for example, I sold one of my property in the last five years, and there was a few documents missing for that. So for that, I had to go to the bank and get the documents—which I never thought, because I had the statement that I bought the property at this price and sold it at this price. I was thinking that that much information is good enough, but she told that no, we need to show that the payment was done from your paycheck and how it was transferred, all those details.

She is very thorough with her job. And lot of documentations are required for source of funds. So I will advise that hire some attorney who has very good experience in EB-5 filing.

I will say that go with the attorney who has very good experience in handling all the EB-5 cases.
The second advice will be it is good if the attorney himself or herself handles all the queries and response, because you will not feel that there’s someone in between to where you pass on the query and then it goes further and comes back. So it really helps to get a fast response.

The third thing will be whatever investment fund, like $800K, better to sell your stocks, or wherever you have the fund, better to move all those funds at one place so that it can be invested at the time. Because this one month was very fast for me, and fortunately, I already accumulated around $600K. I had to still get by selling some share $200K, and it was very, very fast. So I will suggest that better to have all the money at one place before you start or during this process. It will speed up your filing basically.

Yeah. So first of all, as everyone, I did ChatGPT, xAI, and all those, Gemini—everywhere I searched for a good regional center. And I got really good feedback about EB5AN in all the places, and I saw that they have a really long history of successfully getting the project completed and getting Green Cards for their investors. So that was the major primary reason for going with EB5AN.

We did interview around four to five regional centers, but we had some concern. A few of them were not disclosing all the offering documents about the project, or some projects are still in the process of inception. You don’t know whether … For example, a few projects which are getting built in areas where you might not get environment approval. Those kind of constraints are there. So you need to be thorough with whatever project you are investing in.

And even if you are investing in some project, it does not mean that it will be successful. So you need to see that you invest with a regional center which has a very good history of completing successfully all the projects.

So EB5AN, first time itself, when we queried with EB5AN, they provided all the information about all the projects. Actually, it is available on their website also. They are very transparent about it, and it has all the information regarding the project.

You can actually feed these data to a lot of this xAI or ChatGPT kind of input, and you can ask queries about the project: What are the complications? What are the drawbacks? What risks are there? You can do all that.

And you can even ask … So I was handled with Mike. You can ask whomever you are coordinating with EB5AN. You can ask them all kind of questions. They will be very composed, and they will explain you everything bit by bit. Yeah, it was really nice working with EB5AN.

So we were looking for a rural project for sure, because we wanted this fast processing of our EB-5 visa.

Apart from that, the most important point was that the project is creating the required number of jobs. That was the second-highest priority for us, because that is the basis of getting your conditional Green Card and then later on getting a Green Card.

And after that, the third priority was we were looking for a project where the funds are locked for a smaller duration of time as compared to the other project. That was the third priority.

And fourth priority was definitely we are looking for a project where actually it is a successful project because the way it is located or the features it is providing, those kind of information. Those were the criteria for our selection of the project.

Yeah. So rural projects are … So basically, USCIS is prioritizing these projects for approval process. We were looking for a project where we can get our conditional Green Card quickly. And they have 20% reservation in the EB-5 category, and they are doing priority processing for these kind of visas. So that was the reason for selecting a rural project.

Bay Creek project is very beautiful project. That was one of the reasons. It has a long history, so it is getting developed from long time. This project is going to be more successful because there are already lot of structure built around and a lot of functional golf course and all those things are already developed.

Plus on top of that, it is very near to the water bodies and everything. The project itself looks very beautiful. Not as an investor—if I want to buy, I will love to stay somewhere like that. So that was one thought process.

Another thought process was … The timeline for the project was like four year for completion and one-year extension, so total five years. That was another reason for getting into Bay Creek.

Other thing was environmental factor, like whether they will get approval for building the project or not. That was still pending.

The third thing was the project itself was not that big from EB-5 prospective. So you see the dependency on these kind of loan is less in Bay Creek as compared to the other project. So that was another reason.

So yeah, overall, these were the reason why we selected Bay Creek as compared to other project.

The process was very smooth. I just informed EB5AN about we are interested to pursue with this particular project, and they provided all the necessary documents to be prepared. It was within a day all the documents were ready and everything was done. After that, they suggested to start transferring fund in a small amount so that you’re sure that you are transferring to the correct party, and once they confirmed, you transfer all the remaining fund. And it was very smooth. Every day, whenever transfer happens in the evening, we get an email telling that they have received the funds.

And later on also, once all the transfer was done, they prepared the subscription document very quickly and the same was used by Anahita to file my case.

So overall, I think once my source of fund documents were ready, I think it took only three or four days to file my 526E application.

So people from India, if they are on EB-2 or EB-3 and if their priority date are after 2015, I will highly suggest that you go for EB-5 projects, because it is very uncertain when you are going to get your Green Card. And if you want to fix your mind that, okay, you want to stay in U.S., better to go with EB-5 visa.

And for selecting the projects, make sure that the project, what you are selecting, is creating enough jobs. That is very much important. And it should be from a regional center which has a history of successfully completing the projects. And make sure that all risks are covered, and discuss your risk with your attorney. They can really help you to identify if there’s risk involved in the project.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely, I will recommend my attorney, Anahita George, because she is very responsive, and she replies really quickly to all your queries. She works really hard to prepare your document as soon as possible. She will start preparing the document as soon as you start providing the document. So even if you provide the document in steps, she will be already preparing your documents. Yeah, I highly recommend her.

And regarding EB5AN, they are really doing a great job. I highly recommend everyone to go with EB5AN. They have a very high amount of resources available on YouTube as well as their website about all the queries. You can reach to Sam or Mike. Both are very responsive, and they’re really doing a great job.