EB-5 Investor Green Card Benefits
EB-5 Investor Green Card Program is a fast track path to getting your U.S. green card within 18 months. It has the highest U.S. Immigration approval, more than the Tourist Visa, Student Visa, and Employment based green cards, and Marriage Visa. U.S. Congress designated 10,000 visas to individuals in the EB-5 Category and each year thousands go unused. With a secure investment of $500,000 into a State certified project in the U.S. you and your family will be able to qualify for a U.S. green card with all the benefits of a resident.
You Can Live Anywhere in the U.S.
If you have always dreamt of living next to the beach in Hawaii or the coast of California, you can do so. If you prefer the lights and sounds of Las Vegas or New York, then the option is available. No matter where you want to live in the U.S., the EB-5 Green Card gives you the ability to choose where you can set up your business in a completely different state than where you live.
Travel to U.S. Hassle Free Anytime
The freedom to travel back home when you please. Once you have a Green Card in the U.S., you can return to your home country and then back to your new home anytime you wish. If you have an emergency in your home country or need to return to the U.S. immediately, just board a plane and leave without having to apply for a visa.
U.S. Education at Citizen Rates
Access to education at resident prices. As a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. you can afford to get higher education while paying the same money citizens pay. The same can be said for family that moves here with you, which includes any children under age 21. If you have always wanted the best education for you and your children, you can have it now with the EB-5 Green Card.
Be An American Citizen in 5 years
Fast track to becoming a U.S. citizen. You might think you will never become an American citizen, but it is possible to obtain your U.S. citizenship 5 years after your Green Card is approved. You need an experienced immigration attorney to process the file smoothly, however, the INA clearly allows citizenship application if you meet all the requirements. Once you have your citizenship, you can never lose it and do not even have to travel back to the U.S. to maintain it.
Own A Business
Owning your own business. Many people will never have the satisfaction of working for themselves, but with one initial investment, you can achieve that dream. The investment does not require you to be involved in daily operations if you apply at a Regional Center. You can be as involved in the business as you want, and you get to choose what you do with your time and money. This is a luxury many people in most countries do not have.
Secure Investment Earning Interest
Investment with a projected return on investment. By working with our EB-5 Investor Green Card Program, your investment money is secure and will earn interest higher than at a traditional U.S. bank.
High Immigration Approval Rate Than Any Other Visa
High U.S. immigration approval rate. In 2009, 85% of EB-5 Investor Green Card petitions were approved by U.S. immigration. This is a much higher rate than student visas, tourist visas, and marriage visas.
Who Qualifies for an EB-5 Investor Green Card?
There are no limits as to who can qualify for an EB-5 Investor Green Card as long as they can meet the three requirements. Some examples are student visa holders who want to get a green card without having to marry, retirees who want to be able to live and receive some benefits in the U.S., entrepreneurs who do not qualify for E visas, and families with young children who want the benefits of a U.S. school system.
Why Use our EB-5 Investor Green Card Program?
Safe investment with your money. Your investment money is secure and will earn interest higher than at a traditional U.S. Bank. We have a proven management team that has already earned over $800 million gross in previous projects. We have a virtual reality online gaming product that has been profitable for over eight (8) years, and we have the Hollywood connection to make the business successful and profitable.
About the Company: SEE Virtual Worlds
What is the Hollywood Connection?
What makes our online virtual reality games special is that we can use characters and images from famous Hollywood movies. We are able to do this because of the past success of SEE Virtual Worlds www.seevirtualworlds.com
Paramount Studios, MGM, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios have already signed contracts for the use of their movies. Some of the movies that are being discussed are: Batman, James Bond, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, X-Men, King Kong and The Mummy. You too can be part of the magic of a Hollywood success. Visit See Virtual Worlds at www.seevirtualworlds.com
How Do I Get Started?
You can send an inquiry with a completed EB-5 Green Card Questionnaire to our office.
CTR and Associates K1 Fiance Visa Services
Roy Josling and Hang Joslin: K Visa Fiancee
“I had consulted with numerous other immigration lawyers (locally and abroad) prior to meeting Cathy and after the initial consultation with Cathy I knew this was the lawyer that I had been searching for! Cathy answered all my initial questions in thorough detail and comprehensible manner. I chose Cathy and her associates as my sole immigration attorney for all my legal issues which may arise while going through the Fiancee Visa process and with any possible future issues after the process was completed. In my opinion Cathy’s firm went above and beyond my expectations from what I was expecting from an immigration lawyer. ”
K1 Fiance Visa Overview
If your fiance is not a citizen of the United States and you plan to get married in the U.S., then you must file a K1 Visa petition with USCIS on behalf of your fiancé. After the petition is approved, your fiance must obtain a visa issued at a U.S. Embassy or U.S. Consulate abroad. The marriage must take place within 90 days after the 1st admission to the U.S.
If the green card marriage does NOT take place within 90 days or your loved one marries someone other than you (the U.S. citizen filing USCIS Form I-129F – Petition for Alien Fiancé), then he/she will be required to leave the United States. Until the marriage takes place, that person is considered a non-immigrant. A non-immigrant is a foreign national seeking to temporarily enter the United States for a specific purpose and may not obtain an extension of the 90-day original non-immigrant admission.
If your loved one intends to live and work permanently in the United States, you should apply for an adjustment of status for the green card after your marriage. Conditional permanent residency or conditional green cards, or otherwise referred to as the “two year green card” is granted when the marriage is less than two years old at the time of adjustment of status or time of the green card processing.
K1 Visa Step by Step Presentation
Below is a presentation that takes you through the K1 Fiance Visa application process step by step.
For more detailed information please contact us for a consultation.
Who is Eligible?
U.S. citizens who will be getting married to loved one in the United States may petition for a fiance(e) K-1 Visa. Both of you must be free to marry. This means that you are legally able to marry and any previous marriages have ended through divorce, annulment or death. You must have met each other in person within the last two years before filing for the I-129F Form for a Fiancé(e) Visa. This requirement can be waived only if meeting in person would violate long-established customs, or meeting would create extreme hardship for you. You a must marry within 90 days after the initial entry into the U.S.
You may also apply to bring any dependents that your fiance(e) may have who are unmarried and under 21years of age.
After arriving in the United States, you will be eligible to apply for a work permit or employment authorization document for your loved ones. The applicant may be able to work while the green card is pending and in any profession without requiring a work permit.
K1 Fiance Visa and the In Person Meeting Requirement
The INA requires K1 fiance visa applicants to have physically met their US citizen petitioner in person before the USCIS will grant the I-129F. This is simply one factor used to prove the bona fide or sincerity of the relationship between the fiancee visa applicant and the US citizen petitioner.
This in person meeting mandate flies in the face of modern time and technology where couples meet on dating websites, online chats, and social network sites. With the advent of online dating, couples utilize video chat and instant chat, and Skype calls wherein it’s genuinely plausible that couples fall in love and have a bona fide relationship. Saying that though, virtual meetings do not meet the US law that mandates that the couple are in physical presence of each other at least 1 time.
US law does allow for extenuating circumstances where an in person meeting may be waived. This waiver is permitted when it is established that a meeting would be an extreme hardship for the US citizen petitioner, or it is not permitted due to cultural or religious traditions. As long as the religious belief is recognized, or the cultural tradition is sincere, then USCIS will waive the meeting requirement.
For the extreme hardship method, this is a waiver that the US petitioner submit indicating that visa denial based on meeting the fiancee in person mandate would place extreme hardship to the US citizen petitioner. Extreme hardship to the petitioner exists where the petitioner may have an extenuating medical disability or circumstances that warrants a waiver of the meeting in person requirement.
Oftentimes, couples have met and can fulfill the 1 in person meeting requirement, but whether it is sufficient to create a genuine and caring relationship with the visa applicant will depend on the couple’s unique sets of facts. For instance, the consular officers may scrutinize extensively whether a couple who spent 1 day together would be able to establish a bona fide relationship as oppose to 1 month. The 1 day visit may also contradict the traditional notion of a relationship where there’s sincerity and genuine care and affection if the couple commenced their relationship 1-2 months prior to filing the Fiance Visa Application. Nonetheless, a 1 month long visit may also be scrutinized if there are other red flag issues such as a wide age gap or multiple filings for the same applicant.
The US consular officers can glean from the meeting(s) and the evidence submitted whether it rise to the level of of creating a sincere and bona fide relationship.
K1 Visa Consulate Interview
Questions asked by the officer is generally geared at determining whether the couple has a sincere or bona fide relationship. In generally practice,
the interviewing officer will review the documents that the American petitioner submitted to USCIS in the I-129F form, and any additional evidence submitted by the visa applicant. The officer conducts a due diligence in that he/she reviews the information in the file and ask the visa applicant questions to ascertain the sincerity of the relationship. Interviewees may feel intimidated in this situation as one would be if sitting across a complete stranger who asks you personal questions regarding your relationship with your loved one. Nonetheless, the officers are trained to scrutinize the applicant for any legal inadmissibility issue and whether the couple’s relationship is bona fide.
Prenuptial Agreements to Protect Your Separate Assets
Any temptation to lie to the consular officers is pointless as they are trained to detect those deceptive techniques used to obtain a visa. The penalty for lying to a consular officer could result in an outright denial of the visa application and possibly a bar on entry to the US for years to come. Thus, honesty is the best policy when it comes to answering sensitive questions at the interview.
How Can I Appeal a Denied K1 Visa
Generally, you may appeal within 33 days of receiving the denial by mail. The appeal must be filed with the office that made the original decision. After your appeal form and a required fee are processed, the appeal will be referred to the Administrative Appeals Unit (AAU) in Washington, DC.
K1 Fiance Visa
For many American who have met their girlfriends during their holiday tour of Thailand or who have met online through various dating websites, the most confounding problem is what to do if you want to pursue your relationship in the US. The most common questions I get from prospective client are: How can I bring my Thai fiancee to the US to get married? Do I have to marry her in Thailand or can we marry in the US? What are the financial and procedural issues I’d have to substantiate to the US Embassy?
An American citizen who plans to marry in the US must first determine their local USCIS office to file the I-129F for their fiancee. This initial processing means you have to submit sufficient proof that you have a bona fide relationship with you fiancee and you must also have met with your fiancée in person within the last two years before filing for the visa. This requirement can be waived only if meeting your fiancée in person would violate long-established customs, or if meeting your fiancée would create extreme hardship for you. There are narrow exceptions to this rule so if you have fall in this category, you need to get professional legal help. Additionally, you and your fiancée must be free to marry. This means that both of you are unmarried, or that any previous marriages have ended through divorce, annulment or death. You may also apply to bring your fiancée’s unmarried children, who are under age 21, to the US. As a practical matter, the National Visa Center does an administrative review of the file to ensure everything is in order before moving it along to the US Consulate abroad.
Once your petition is approved in the US, the file is then sent to your fiancee’s country of residence, and in this case it would be Bangkok, Thailand. The US Consulate will do an administrative review of the file to see that everything is in order and then send your fiancee a packet of information to complete prior to making an interview appointment. This ranges from residency documents to medical exams, and any supplemental evidence she may want to take to the interview to verify the veracity of the relationship. While the US Consulate does see a fair amount of fraudulent cases, most Consular Officers are fair and knowledgeable in immigration law and they will normally approve credible, legitimate cases.To their credit, they are trained to determine if a case lacks merits or if it’s purely based on circumventing USA immigration laws, for which they will ultimately deny.
The most crucial part of this process is the interview. This is the only time where the Consular Officer will meet with your fiancee and to determine whether there are any discrepancies or dishonesty in the case. This is an essential and pivotal point in the process and where more applicants tend to fail. As mentioned earlier, the Consular Officers are adept at fraud detection and signs of misrepresentation, wherein it is within their discretion to outright deny the case and send it back to USCIS for revocation, or they issue a 221(g) and forward it to Administrative Processing. Either way, the strength of the case is dependent on the applicant’s response to questions posed and the quantity and quality of the evidence. It’s true, some legitimate cases are wrongfully denied, and some weak ones do get approved.
If your fiancee is successful, the U.S. Embassy will issue a visa for her, and her dependents if applicable, to go abroad and get married. However, the marriage has to take place within 90 days of your fiancee entering the USA. If the marriage does not take place, your fiancee cannot marry someone else and she must return to Thailand. Until the marriage takes place, your fiancée is considered a nonimmigrant, which is simply a foreign national seeking to temporarily enter the United States for a specific purpose so it’s nearly impossible to change the status of that visa to that of Tourist or Student Visa when your fiancee enters on the Fiancee K1 Visa.
If your fiancee intends to live and work permanently in the US, she should apply to become a permanent resident after your marriage. If she does not, she will have to leave the country before the 90 days nonimmigrant admission date. Once the permanent residence is issued after your marriage, your fiancee will initially receive conditional permanent residence status for two years, and it simply means that the marriage was created less than two years at the time of the application for permanent residence. This would also apply to any dependents that benefited from the K-2, such as her unmarried children.
Alternatively, if you are one of those unfortunate souls that were denied a Fiancee Visa, you may appeal within 33 days of receiving the denial by mail. Chances of getting an appeal approved is slim, especially if the denial is based on facts in the case. If you believe it was erroneously denied due to legal grounds, I suggest hiring professional legal help to appeal to the appropriate department in the Embassy. More often than not, clients do not even realize that their denial was without applicable legal basis versus factual findings to gauge whether to appeal. Many will simply abandon the Fiancee Visa and seek other immigration options or they seek the advice of a legal professional. This is purely a personal and strategic decision depending on your ultimate goal.
Working with the US Embassy does not have to be a traumatic or expensive journey. It takes some time to research the administrative procedures and a patient. The end result of bringing your fiancee to the USA should be your ultimate goal and never underestimate the power of bureaucracy.
End to Widow Penalty in USA
| Legislative efforts in eradicating the widow penalty legislation is under way.
The legislation to end the widow penalty was included in the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Bill. The bill will now go to the House to be reconciled with the House DHS appropriations bill and the Senate version. If passed, it then goes to the President for signature. The bill will fix a flaw in the law where legal spouses of American citizens face automatic denial and threat of deportation when their spouses die during lengthy bureaucratic green card processing. There are over two hundred of these cases across the country affecting women, mothers and children. This horrible, unintended practice is called the widow penalty and efforts have been under way since 2004 to end the widow penalty. Click here to read more. |
Waiver of the INA 212(e) Two-Year Foreign Residence Requirement Pertaining to J-1 Exchange Visitors
A J-1 exchange visitor is defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA) as an alien “having a residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning who is a bona fide student, scholar, trainee, teacher, professor, research assistant, specialist or leader in a field or specialized knowledge or skill” and the broad category encompasses 13 subcategories within the J-1 provision.
The INA originally required all exchange visitors to return to their home country, or country of last residence, for a period of two years before being able to acquire temporary worker H status, intracompany transferee L status, or permanent resident status. Provisions to waive the two year foreign residence requirement has evolved when in instances compliance would cause an exceptional hardship to the alien’s US citizen or permanent resident alien spouse or child, or result in persecution to the alien on the basis of race, religion, or political opinion.
Are you subject to the two-year foreign residence requirement?
An exchange visitor (EV) may be subject to the two-year foreign residence requirement of INA for one or more of the following reasons. The alien’s participation in the exchange program was funded by the US government, the alien’s own government, or an international organization. The other reason is the education, training, or skill the alien is pursuing appears on the Exchange Visitor Kills List for the alien’s country. Additionally, the alien acquired J-1 status on or after January 10, 1977, for the purpose of receiving graduate medical education or training.
If you are subject, what does that mean?
If you are subject to the two-year foreign residence requirement, you may not change your status to that of H, L, or K, or to immigrant or legal permanent status until you have fulfilled the two-year foreign residence requirement by going back to your home country or receiving a waiver of this requirement.
If you are subject to the INA 212(e) and want a waiver of the two-year foreign residence requirement, there are five grounds for waivers.
No Objection Statement (NOS): The alien’s home country government issue a No Objection Statement (NOS) through its Embassy in Washington, DC directly to the waive the requirement. The law precludes the use of this option by foreign medical physicians, who acquired J-1 status on or after January 10, 1977, for the purpose of receiving graduate medical education or training.
Request by an interested government agency (IGA): If an exchange visitor is working on a project for or of interest to a U.S. Federal Government agency, and that agency has determined that the visitor’s departure for two years to fulfill the INA 212(e) requirement will be detrimental to its interest, that agency may request an interested government agency waiver on behalf of the alien for sake of public interest.
Persecution: If an exchange visitor believes that he or she will be persecuted based on his/her race, religion, or political opinion if he/she were to return to his/her home country, the alien may apply for a persecution waiver.
Exceptional hardship to a United States citizen (or legal permanent resident) spouse or child of an exchange visitor: If an alien can demonstrate that his or her departure from the US would cause exceptional hardship to his or her U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident spouse or child, he or she may apply for an exceptional hardship waiver.
Request by a designated State Department of Public Health or its equivalent, CONRAD: Pursuant to the requirements of Public Law 103-416, a foreign medical graduate who has an offer of full-time employment at a health care facility in a designated health care professional shortage area or at a health care facility which serves patients from such a designated area, and agrees to begin employment at that facility within 90 days of receiving such a waiver, and who signs a contract to continue to work at that health care facility for a total of 40 hours per week and for not less than three years, may apply for a waiver under this basis.
