(Image source from: wtc-sf.com)

New Delhi:
The route to the United States through EB5 visa, may not continue to offer as usual smooth ride to well skilled Indians who have applied large in numbers, breaching the annual cap of 700 for the first time, according to the consultants, making the once easy to obtain immigrant “visa for cash” be more elusive.

As the growing number of Indians have been choosing for the EB-5 immigrant investor programme owing to stricter regulations on other visa categories such as H-1B and H-4. Under the programme, entrepreneurs and their spouses as well as children under 21are eligible to apply for a green card, which allows permanent residence if they make an investment of $500,000 and plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for US workers.

As per the recent figures by authorities, the applicants have grown over 500 which are filed by Skilled Indians under the EB-5 visa category in the ongoing year (October 2017-September 2018).

“We absolutely see a continuous rush of EB-5 applications continuing until September. With expected changes to the programme, like an increased investment amount, we anticipate the rush of applications to go up significantly in the next few months,” a managing director at consulting firm Pankaj Joshi said.

Authorities have said that, the firm has seen an over threefold jump in EB-5 visa applications, from Indians over the past year or so, he said.

“At the USA EB-5 advocacy conference in April, an official from the US visa office announced that India will hit its country cap in June 2019 and will start to see waiting periods of two-three years for allotment of green cards for EB-5 applicants who are approved,” Lindy Bradford, marketing manager at Florida-based US Immigration Fund told ET in an emailed response. USIF, one of America’s EB-5 regional centre operators with 6,000 clients, has seen about half the Indian investors who were earlier pursuing the H-1B route to the US turn to the EB-5 programme.

By Lokesh