26 February 2025
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EB-5 UPDATE: President Trump’s $5 million Gold Visa for foreign investors. An end to EB-5 or simply an additional avenue for wealthy foreign investors?
The news is full of headlines about President Trump’s announcement yesterday (February 25, 2025), that in the next two weeks, he will propose a $5 million “Gold Card” program to replace the EB-5 program. The new program would allow wealthy individuals to pay $5 million directly to the US government to obtain US citizenship.
Some see this announcement as the death sentence for the EB-5 program. Others want to argue about whether the President has the power to terminate the EB-5 program without Congressional approval. Some speculate how the administration could effectively stop USCIS processing of EB-5 visas. EB-5 investors are concerned what this means to their investment and pending application.
This announcement made a lot of headlines, but it may well be one of President’s signature moves to shake things up so he can negotiate to get other big changes. Perhaps he is signaling an intent to reshape investment-based immigration rather than eliminate it. It might make more sense to add a new program to the existing EB-5 program. He could leave the existing program alone without taking away anything from his new approach.
It may be that President Trump wanted to grab everyone’s attention—and he certainly succeeded. While this could be a very important shift in U.S. immigration policy, it’s too early to evaluate what this will mean for EB-5 investors or to suggest any strategies moving forward. There are many unknowns, and we cannot make any definitive calls until we know more details. We are on top of these developments and are actively monitoring them. We will post new information as soon as we have more to share.
Read the Wall Street Journal’s article on the subject here.
Read the New York Time’s article on the subject here.
See our past coverage of developments related to the EB-5 program here.
This is Jim Butler, author of www.HotelLawBlog.com and founding partner of JMBM and JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group®. We provide business and legal advice to hotel owners, developers, independent operators, and investors. This advice covers critical hotel issues such as hotel purchase, sale, development, financing, franchise, management, ADA, and IP matters. We also have compelling experience in hotel litigation, union avoidance and union negotiations, and cybersecurity & data privacy.
JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® has been involved in more than $125 billion of hotel transactions and more than 4,700 hotel properties located around the globe. Contact me at +1-310-201-3526 or jbutler@jmbm.com to discuss how we can help.
David Sudeck is Co-Chair of JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® and a partner in JMBM’s real estate department. His practice primarily involves the complex issues associated with major commercial real estate projects, particularly those involving hotels, resorts, and mixed-use projects.
David is a seasoned real estate attorney and deal maker with an international reputation for his expertise on projects with a hospitality component, and he focuses in particular on providing practical counsel on critically important management and branding agreement issues. He is also widely recognized for providing top business and legal advice to hotel owners and lenders in the purchase, sale, development, construction, financing, leasing, and sale-leaseback of properties.
When he is not working on traditional senior debt or mezzanine financings for owners or lenders, David is likely working on creative joint ventures or “alternate” commercial property assessed clean energy (C-PACE) or EB-5 financings, as the head of the Firm’s C-PACE and EB-5 Finance groups. Since 2020, David and his team have closed more than $400 million of C-PACE financings, and David has been involved in virtually all of the $1.5 billion of EB-5 financings the Firm has handled. David also serves on the Public Policy Committee of the IIUSA, the EB-5 industry’s trade group for regional centers.
Contact David at +1-310-201-3518 or DSudeck@jmbm.com
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