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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: skinowski who wrote (90848)	6/12/2012 9:49:35 AM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217830

The world is moving in that Tradable Citizenship direction, but the politicians simply can't let go. When you calculate what one would be worth for the USA, you can use the following information as a start but then need to add the fact that people cannot then sell any issued citizenship to somebody else, meaning it's a one way transaction and they also have to cope with a huge pile of red tape such that only a third of the category makes it to the finishing line: finance.yahoo.com $1 million to $1 million would be the price to start in the USA for a properly tradable one, without all the red tape and years of silly game playing, with money wasted on make-work jobs. < By James O'Toole \| CNNMoney.com – Mon, Jun 11, 2012 5:48 AM EDT Eduardo Saverin drew public ire last month following the revelation that he had renounced his U.S. citizenship, a move widely seen as a tax dodge. But thousands of wealthy foreigners are lining up to replace him, making investments here and putting themselves on a path to citizenship in the process. The State Department expects to issue over 6,000 "investor visas" in the current fiscal year, which would be an all-time record. Other countries, meanwhile, are following the U.S.'s lead, keen to spur growth in lean economic times. "Our goal is certainly job creation, and that's what this program is all about," said Bill Wright, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. "At the same time, it's allowing somebody from a foreign country to come and invest in our nation." [Related: Destinations Where The Dollar Goes Farther] Under the government's EB-5 Immigrant Investor program, foreign investors can get conditional visas that allow them and their families to live, work and attend school in the U.S. To qualify for the visa, they must invest at least $1 million in a new or recently created business, or $500,000 for businesses in rural or high-unemployment areas. The investment must be demonstrated to have created or preserved at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers within two years. Assuming this condition is met, investors and their families graduate to permanent resident status, and can apply for full citizenship three years later. While the EB-5 program has been around since 1990, demand has been surging as of late, fueled in large part by China's growing elite, who accounted for 70% of the roughly 3,500 investor visas issued last year. State Department officials expect the program's quota of 10,000 visas per year, which includes visas given to the spouses and children of investors, to be filled for the first time ever within the next year or two. Some critics of the U.S. program question the fairness of letting wealthy immigrants pay for special treatment, while others say investments and job creation claims need stricter vetting. Immigrants who arrive via the program have no guarantee of recovering their investments, and may face deportation if they don't produce the required number of jobs. Investing overseas: Find the right balance Of the roughly 12,000 immigrants who've arrived on the EB-5 investor visa, just 39% have earned permanent residency, according to USCIS data. There's also the lengthy application and approval process -- a 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office said the program's reputation for red tape had dampened interest among foreigners in the preceding years.> It would be so much simpler to simply offer them for sale. People paying $2 million for a citizenship would spend plenty of money which would be a big economic boost, as would the construction and other good works that $2 million citizenship sales would finance. For $500,000 an immigrant investor could hire at $10 an hour 50,000 hours of work = 25 person years at 2000 hours per year. So they could hire 10 people at $10 an hour for two years which would get them their citizenship, especially if the "business" earned some of that back. There are lots of immigrant businesses in NZ which seem to be along similar lines - they act as "employment" fronts to get past the immigration rules. Once the system is cracked, then the family can get in to on "family reunification" rules. There are scams galore when bureaucrats run such a mess. Hong Kong's system is much more sensible. Just hand over the loot to a property owner. But still not the best way. Mqurice