Marko Issever is CEO of America EB5, a company that works with immigrants on getting a visa through an investment program. I’ve known Marko for a few years and enjoyed having the time to learn more about the specific work he does. It’s fascinating.
Before diving deep into the EB5 visas, he explains the different types of visas a person can request for extended stays in the United States.
First, they break down into immigrant versus non-immigrant. Non-immigrant visas include part time stays for students, tourists and part-time workers.
Immigrant visas can be family based or employment based. Employment based visas fall into five categories:
EB1 – Exceptional people who are well known due to their accomplishments in academics or business, performances, or sports ability. They are well known or featured in the news. They can self-sponsor to apply for a visa.
EB2- Highly educated people that have at least a Masters Degree and have a job offer in an area that domestic companies have a hard time hiring.
EB3- Nonskilled worker that are needed particularly in a needy or growing area. Again, the workers must have a job offer and apply.
EB4 – Religious leaders such as Rabbis, Imams, and Priests can apply for a visa under this category.
EB5 – Investors can apply under this visa to help stimulate employment in the US.
The EB5 visa is the area that Marko specializes in and what we discussed in more depth. It applies to global marketing as it offers people from around the world a chance to come to the United States to expand their community and bring their diverse experience to the US.
Originally, the program offered a visa to a US immigrant who invested $1 million in a business and hired at least 10 people for at least 2 years. This partially worked, but put a difficult burden on some investors who could invest the capital but had a hard time fulfilling the 10 employee requirement.
The US kept this program but started another called the Regional Center Program (RCP) that has the authority to create opportunities with multiple investors to keep the international investments coming in, and also allow support in how the jobs are created.
The RCP coordinates multiple investors to create bigger projects which is easier to create jobs.
So, the visa applicant can work with a US developer and a bank to finance the project to create a financing tool with the following investments:
EB5 visa applicant – 20%
Developer – 20%
Bank financed debt – 60%
Marko says that the expected return is $5 for every $1 invested.
It’s a win-win:
- The developer hires the local people and runs the project which creates more stable jobs. And they’re motivated to get the job done with favorable funding.
- The bank wants secured projects with experienced and connected developers.
- The EB5 investor can get the credit for hiring employees and thus receive a visa.
For people outside the US, if you have $1.5 million dollars that you can invest for 5 years, you can apply for an EB5 visa and Marko can assist you in the practicalities of making it happen.
We then discussed who are the people that apply for these visas. Marko says that about 80% of them are families of students that are studying in the US. The students can get a student visa but can’t work in the US after graduating. By staying in the US for work, they get practical work experience and can earn higher wages. After spending $250k-300k for a US education, the higher salaries help increase the return on their educational investment. If they return to their home countries, they may make a fraction of the salary. By getting 3-5 years of entry level experience in the US, the graduates can return to their countries at a higher level so it’s a real advantage to get the US work experience.
Parents with the means, invest the money to increase opportunities for their children.
A person approved for an EB5 visa can bring in their spouse and children under 18 years old. On average, the EB5 applicants use 3 visas for each investment.
With only 10,000 EB5s available each year, that means there are approximately 2500-3000 investors each year for about $1 million each.
Marko said that historically, Chinese families received most of the EB5 visas. In 2004, the program was marketed to other countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Russia and Korea and limits were increased for the number of visas granted to each country.
Chinese are still prominent in applying for the Visa but there is more diversity in applicants now.
Recently, they instituted new guidelines to carve out projects for specific areas.
- Infrastructure – investments in large scale, and needed infrastructure.
- Rural – 200 visas were added for investors who want to focus on rural investment. This has no country restrictions.
- Standard – investment in areas where unemployment is 150% or higher than average
When I asked whether this was a program for rich people to buy their way into the United States, he explained that the typical family doing this has a net worth of about $3-10 million. They decide to invest a substantial amount of their net worth into an opportunity for their child(ren). If a family is extremely wealthy, they can do the original EB5 visa and invest $10-50 million and enter the US. The families utilizing this program anxiously wait to get their investment back. It’s not just a one-sided benefit for the families.
The US benefits from international investments, job creation, and funding for projects in areas that might be overlooked.
With 2500-3000 investment visas, over 30,000 jobs are created in the US.
The students who study in the US and then work with the EB5 visa are lawyers, medical professionals, doctors, IT experts and more. Even if the EB5 visa is pending, companies can offer the graduates a job and hire highly qualified global citizens.
After Marko graduated with an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, he had trouble getting a job having to answer the dreaded question…. Do you have authorization to work in the US? He had to find a sponsor company that would help with the visa process. The EB5 program changes that as students can say that the application is pending and the companies can hire them.
The advantages of the EB5 program are tremendous:
- Expands the high-quality talent pool for hiring managers in the US
- Allows the hiring company to hire for merit and experience rather than just legal eligibility
- Adds international experience to the domestic team
- Gives a resource to open business in the new employee’s home country
- Adds diversity of thought to the team which increases creativity, and innovation
We ended the discussion on how he attracts new clients interested in EB5 visas. He said that his website, www.americaeb5visa.com is translated into 25 languages. He knows the importance of high quality translation so he had humans do the translation – he would not use Google Translate because the quality is not good enough.
If you’d like to reach out to him to learn more, you can reach him on WhatsApp at 917-355-9251 or at info@americaeb5visa.com or on his website at www.americaeb5visa.com
Links:
WhatsApp at 917-355-9251 or at info@americaeb5visa.com or on his website at www.americaeb5visa.com
Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/
Connect with Marko https://www.linkedin.com/in/markoissever/
Music: Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
ATTENTION: Below is a machine generated transcription of the podcast. Yes, at Rapport International, we talk a lot about how machine translation is not good quality. Here you see an example of what a machine can do in your own your language. This transcription is provided as a gist and to give time indicators to find a topic of interest.
[00:00:34] Wendy: Would you wear a "rock?" Well, in Germany and Sweden, a rock is something you wear! In German, it's a skirt and in Swedish it's a coat. So it is, funny in the United States, if you say , I'm wearing my rock, that could mean something like an engagement ring or a big diamond but, in other languages it's something else.
[00:00:59] So, welcome to The Global Marketing Show. That's your tidbit from Rapport International, who's the sponsor of the podcast. Rapport International connects you. To anyone anywhere in the world in over 200 languages with high quality written translation and spoken interpretation services.
[00:01:19] Today we're taking a little bit of a different angle. We've got Marko Issever here, who's the founding CEO of America, EB5 Visa. So we're gonna get into international business and how do you pull people in, to work in the United States and some of the special considerations on that. I'm fascinated to hear that because I've been hearing more and more talk about people working cross borders.
[00:01:48] So he leads EB5 capital related activities at Riverside Management Group, and he connects international investors with EB5 issuers. So we're gonna get into all this and explain. He recently launched CBP Invest a global immigration company advising clients in second country citizenship in countries like Granada, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, Malta, and Greece, some fabulous countries.
[00:02:19] Marco speaks Turkish and Latino Spanish fluently. He's got an MBA in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and he is a graduate of Bogaziçi University and Robert College, both located in Istanbul. So we met through Soft Land Partners and it's honor to get to know you and what you do, Marko, so welcome to The Global Marketing Show!
[00:02:45] Marko: Thank you for having. Yes.
[00:02:48] Wendy: Yes. So tell us what an EB5 Visa is.
[00:02:57] Marko: So EB5 visa is a way for a person who is not obviously a US citizen to obtain a green card. There are many different ways to get a green card to be able to, obtain permanent residency in the United States.
[00:03:12] EB5 is one of those methods. There. Essentially two kinds of visas in the United States. The non-immigrant visas and the immigrant visas, the non-immigrant visas are visas that the United States gives to people who do not have an immigrant intent, who are coming here as a tourist, as a student, as a part-time work, part-time meaning a few years, and then they're gonna go back to their country.
[00:03:40] And there are a whole host of other types of visas that are non-I. And then there are these immigrant visas. They're family based spouse a parent. Like family-based visas and then their employment based visas, the employment-based visas. On the permanent side that lead to a green card, there are essentially five categories.
[00:04:01] E B one, eeb two, E B three, E four, e B five. So e B one is given to people with exceptional qualifications. They really self sponsor. They're have international, at least national recognition. EEB two are for people. So
[00:04:20] Wendy: can you gimme an example of somebody that would be an e B one?
[00:04:25] Marko: It's a great question.
[00:04:25] I, I, I do not think that it is, Written exactly what it is, but I'll tell you who has a good chance if they have articles written and published in internationally acclaimed, you know, wall Street Journal, New York Times, that type of places repeatedly being quoted professors who have done some incredible research and have gotten prizes.
[00:04:49] Doesn't have to be Nobel Prize , but you know, big, you know, big prizes. All the way to, I mean, you have to be very good at what you do. You have to be at the minimum on a national level, very, very good at what you do. International, obviously way better. So, so it's possible. The chef who is incredible, you know, in whatever they cook, whatever they do, can't get an e B one A a.
[00:05:14] Could be a, a, a sports person. So in other words, whatever, it doesn't matter what field it is, but they have to go beyond the, you know, norm. So what what happens is there's a non-immigrant version of this, it's called oh one, and obviously it's much easier to get the O one. And the mistake people make is that you know, since I got the o.
[00:05:38] Now my next thing is, now let me go for e B one. And sometimes the qualifications fall short, uh, of the e B one. Full disclosure, I'm not an immigration attorney. . Yes. Let me, let me, no, even though we're talking about immigration here, the reason why we do this is for in investment based visas, which is basically e e V five on the on, on the permanent side and E two, really on the non-immigrant side, which we can get into later if you like.
[00:06:09] Okay. So
[00:06:10] Wendy: yeah, I interrupted you on e B one. Now I have a better understanding. Can you go to, you know, than
[00:06:15] Marko: Eeb two, right? Right. So, E B two is for people who have a master's. . And they have a job offer from an institution and obviously the place cannot hire. A local worker, and that's the reason why they're going for a foreign national.
[00:06:32] And that would be the EEB two. There's also eeb two national interest Waiver that sounds, and smells very much like e B one. They're also I mean, the, the difference between e B one and national with Eeb two very blurry. Again, I'm, I'm not gonna go into it, but that's also for exceptional quality for people who have exceptional qualities.
[00:06:55] E B three, believe it or not, is a non-skilled worker visa. This is the most fascinating one. You could have a Google, Microsoft, apple, you know, some company here. Doesn't, he's not looking for the the IT guy, the engineer or whatever, but they're looking for unskilled labor and you figure out what, what I mean by unskilled.
[00:07:19] You know, like the, uh, the workers you know, that are gonna do jobs that for whatever reason they can't find. US citizens to do not that US citizen is not, is not capable of doing, they just don't wanna do it. So there is a labor shortage. It's kind of
[00:07:34] Wendy: like the hotels and restaurants in Cape Cod hire people to come in internationally to work during the summer.
[00:07:42] They'd be coming in under the e
[00:07:44] Marko: B three. Not really. So, no, no, no. Your que your questions amazing. It's great. I love this. So no, so there you're gonna have a temporary, right? Because you're talking with the summer. They need them for three months. The US government is not gonna give these people green cards so that, you know, these places can employ them for three months.
[00:08:07] We're, we're talking about full-time jobs, we're talking about full-time. Need, like, in other words, in order to be able to do the work that you wanna do, the, the, the business that you wanna ha do you, you need these people, like you're in construction business. I mean, let's, let's, you're in construction business, you need construction workers, not because you're gonna work from July to August, but you're, this is your business and you're trying to hire.
[00:08:34] There's nobody out there, you know, it's just like, and, and you're willing to pay. It's not as if, you know, you, you don't wanna pay market rate. It's just you, you want pay market rate. You wanna hire unskilled labor, non-skilled labor. And for some reason you cannot find so. So there is a way that you could petition and you can bring people 20, 30, 50 of.
[00:08:58] From different countries and they can come in as a group in the e B three. It's a, it's a, it's a growing area. And there are people you know, intermediaries like us, like us. We're not in that business right now, but there are people who are, and they connect people who want to immigrate to United States to work in these jobs.
[00:09:20] Sponsors, I mean employers who are looking for this talent,
[00:09:24] Wendy: like an EEB two where they need to have a job offer and then apply for the Visa,
[00:09:29] Marko: right? But EEB two, what we're talking about, EEB two is first of all, skilled, as we say. I mean, beyond undergraduate, we're talking about really with a graduate degree.
[00:09:38] So it's a really skilled, and they have a job offer. So Eeb two is happening with, you know, on a one and, you know, like, like. One, one by one basis. Right? Not that e B three could, could not, I mean, that's right. So, so you could have a situation where the person has an undergraduate degree that's not so bad.
[00:09:57] I mean, it's a bachelor's degree and has a job offer. He's also gonna go through e B three. . He's also gonna go through three. So in other words, a person wants a job. I, I mean, wants uh, a company wants to hire a person who does not have a master's degree cuz undergraduate degree, one person and have put ads in the paper.
[00:10:18] Whatever they did, they did whatever they needed to do to see if there will be. US citizen or a green holder, somebody who has the permission to work in the, in the United States that would be willing to come to this job and they couldn't. Right. What I'm wondering about is they couldn't find.
[00:10:37] Wendy: Heard so many people that will say that they need a job offer to get the visa.
[00:10:43] So it's not like somebody can apply for a visa and come into the United States and then
[00:10:47] Marko: find a job. No. They need a, they need, they need a job offer. They need a job. They need a job offer without a, and the job offer by itself does not, it's not a sufficient statistic, if you will. It's not, it's not enough together with the job.
[00:10:57] The company has to do what they need to do to find out, to, to make sure that there is really no talent here locally that will do that, that that kind of job. That's for, that's. The case for Eeb two or Eeb three. Okay. Then you got the e B four, which is sort of like the green card version of the R one visa.
[00:11:16] This a religious, so your rabbi or a imam or a priest or whatever. Some a person of the cloth, is that what you call it? A man of the cloth? Yeah. So, so those people the green card version as he before, the, the ones who are coming here for a year, two year, three year non-immigrant version is r.
[00:11:34] And then finally we come to the e B five. E. B five was intended to spur up employment in United States. So there's a law that passed in 1990 and the. The idea was that a foreigner is gonna make, come here and make an investment for a million bucks and is going to with this million bucks is gonna have the obligation to hire 10 plus.
[00:12:02] You know, full-time, he was gonna create 10 plus full-time positions. And so not only money would come in here, but most, more importantly, jobs would be created. Mm-hmm. . So the us EB5. System is really the, the core of it is jobs. Jobs have to be created. So this went on a couple of years, you know, 19 90, 91, 92, and they found out that the weld program was very good.
[00:12:30] It's called the Direct five Program. The problem was that a million bucks was not enough to hire 10 people. and employ them at least for two years while trying to make money. I mean, it's just like, like just the math didn't work then. And the ma the ma the math doesn't work now either. So they created a pilot program called Regional Center Program.
[00:12:54] So regional , so region center program, basically projects. The responsibility of creating these jobs from the investor himself to the regional center and the regional center has the authority from the US government to be able to you know, collect these mon monies. And it's not no longer.
[00:13:18] One project, one investor, you can have one project and multiple investors. So instead of investing $1 million, you can have 10 investors investing collectively, 10 million. And the investor doesn't really have to do the job. In fact, in regional center program, they're all passive. You have a developer, you have a real estate developer who takes in this money.
[00:13:44] Creates the jobs with the money. Now, typically what happens is that in the capital stack of an e B five Regional Center version, you have not only. The investors, the EVA five investors, but you also have the developer who puts money from his own pocket. We call that equity. And then you have a bank that comes in on the top of the capital structure and lends money to the system.
[00:14:11] So now you see the leverage building up. You have for every dollar, I'll give you sort of the market standard. Of course, this, this, this can change. We look for about 60% of debt from the. 20% from the e b five investor, 20% from the developer. So so every dollar now becomes $5, right? So 20, 20 60. So every dollar that the investor puts creates really $5.
[00:14:43] So because of that, Obviously it's much, much easier to create the jobs. You have much more money to you know, play around with play, play with the. Developer is not interested in the jobs. I mean, he's interested creating jobs because he wants to get the job done, but there's not no credit that they need for this.
[00:15:02] You know, they just wanna make money. The the bank that's lending the money also is not, is not interested in the jobs, in terms of, you know so they just want to land on a secure basis and make money. So all those jobs that are created with that inflated number from one to five, Gets credited to the investor.
[00:15:23] So in a way, what you're seeing here is that the investor wins because at the end of the day, for himself, for his family and children who are younger than 21 year old unmarried, they can all get green cards. The developer wins because he gets essentially very favorable funding.
[00:15:44] From the B five investor, and and the government wins because you know the government now, yes, they are giving green cards. Some people may be criticized that, you know, you're in, you're deflating the value of the green card, whatever. But at the, but end of the day, a lot of employment is created.
[00:16:03] The numbers have changed. The law had passed in 1990, up until essentially this year, believe it or not. In March it was 1 million. and if you have a project in a targeted employment area, which is experiencing more than 150% of the unemployment nationwide, so it's a, it's an area that is, has unemployment more than normal.
[00:16:27] Then the, the number was less. So 50% in million, half a million. So those numbers have changed. The half a million has become 800,000 and the million, million 50. So you might say like why the million only went up with by five 50,000 and the 500 by 300,000. There is some history there in a, the brief period from November of 2019 up until June of 2021.
[00:17:01] By regulation, not by change of law, by regulation. The government experimented to take the 500 to 900, the 1 million to 1.8, meaning double double 500 in other words, double of 901.8. Just like five, 1 million was double of half a million that essentially killed the business. The numbers were just too high for foreigners to afford.
[00:17:25] So anyway this is the new law. It comes with a lot of New features, great features that would benefit not only investors who want to come here, but also people who are already here, like students H one Bs, who have a job. But on a non-immigrant basis In the, in the old law, when you applied to e B five until you got the green card, which could take 2, 3, 4 years, you really had no privileges in the new law that passed.
[00:17:52] As I said, in March of this year, we have a, what's called concurrent filing with a concurrent filing. In addition to the e B five investment simultaneously, you can have a application for labor certificate and application for. Travel. So once a person can work here and can travel back and forth, I mean, you know, you know, green Card is great of course, because once you have a green card for five years, you are eligible for an American citizenship passport.
[00:18:23] But other than that, I mean people, so you see a lot of Indians now with H one B visas here. The students who are Applying and who are benefiting from this new feature of concurrent filing.
[00:18:37] Wendy: Okay, so now that I've got the background a bit more clear, I mean, I think there's so many more layers, but I've got the, the, the landscape of it.
[00:18:46] Can you talk me through like a client story. Tell me about, you know, and I'm trying to tie this back into global marketing, but I'd like to go from a cl a client that has, it has to be somebody wealthy that has money that's gonna come in and do a project here. So can you think of a good example and walk us through what it looked
[00:19:07] Marko: like?
[00:19:10] Of course. So I would say 80% and probably my numbers are pretty correct. 80% of the market, believe it or not, are students who are not rich. You know, they're only students, but of course they have a rich parent. So the parent really gives them the money which is a acceptable source of. , you can have the money that you invest in, in V five obtained as, as a gift.
[00:19:36] You can have it as a loan. Now it used to be collateralized loan. Now it doesn't have to be, it can be unsecured or it can be of course earned income. So for the student, it's obvious, you know, they went to school here. They got tremendous. Theoretical knowledge from the likes of m i t, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, whatever, wherever they want.
[00:19:55] And it's a shame that they will go back to their country and over there, I mean the, the, the, the monthly, the yearly salary wages that they're gonna make. Is it's impossible to amortize an American education. You're talking about here with room and board, 250 to $300,000, just a bachelor's degree at least.
[00:20:19] Mm-hmm. Probably more nowadays. So it's impossible. But, but if they, if they get the green card and they gave a job. They can put that theoretical experience into practice and then after five, seven years, eight years they can go back to their country if that's what they want to do and they get, get a middle level or maybe even senior level job.
[00:20:38] I think you are more interested in the family that is coming in. Sort of a, let's say a middle-aged you know, has already, you know has, has gotten this kind of wealth because wait, wait, wait. Hold on,
[00:20:50] Wendy: hold on. Let's dig in. So you're saying that 80% of them are students whose parents are buying the opportunity for them to work in the United States and get that, that experience?
[00:20:59] Yeah. That's fascinating to me. What countries are they coming from?
[00:21:05] Marko: Another amazing question. So amazing. Great question. So, Country that had a monopoly in e B five for reasons that I have no idea because I wasn't doing e B five back then was China. Hmm. So, just a little background. The EB5 awards, 10,000 visas per year.
[00:21:28] That's it. You can only get 10,000 of us globally from all the countries. Now if you. Assume that a family on the average is three to four people, just as assumption, obviously that really means 2,500 at most, 3000 investors per year. So that number was fine. Run that by
[00:21:53] Wendy: me again. If you have 10,000.
[00:21:56] Marko: Visas.
[00:21:57] If you, if you can only, if you can only award that. That's the program. The program for the time being awards on a yearly basis, 10,000 visas, right? Mm-hmm. . So what I'm saying is that if, let's say every applicant had a spouse and two kids, just as assume that mm-hmm. , every applicant were four people. Mm-hmm.
[00:22:20] So that means that there will be 2,500 investors with three dependent. So there will be 20, 2500 applications Correct. That that can be processed per year because anything above that, there's no visa for it. It's a 10,000 visas capped annually. In addition to that, there are other caps, like a country caps is 7%.
[00:22:47] You know, in other words no country can get more than 700 visas unless of course, , there's no other countries. So in the case where that's, that's where I'm going with this, you know, in up until 2015, 14, I mean, long time, right? 1990, I mean, what's this, 20 years, 25 years. . I mean, I'm a Wall Street veteran Wendy.
[00:23:09] I've worked in Wall Street essentially all my life. I didn't know about . , and this is crazy. This was a wealth kept secret for so many years, right? And the people in Wall Street, I mean, it's because it's a Wall Street product, by the way. You know, the, what the investor is buying is a private. It's a private placement.
[00:23:30] You're, they're buying a security, they're putting the money in, and they're buying a security because this security, you know, pays a very, very small interest rate. But at the end, you know, they get their money back and you know, you have to do the due diligence. This is real security, real investment.
[00:23:46] It's tied to immigration. But anyway so it was really among the Chinese. So what happened is that Chinese started applying w w way more number of Chinese started applying than the the 2000, 3000, 4,000, whatever it is. So what happened? All those applications because of the non-availability of visas, cause again, 10,000 visas per year started backlog.
[00:24:16] So those people got into the queue. Mm-hmm. By the, by 2015 it was so bad that there were 50,000, 60,000, 80,000. I mean, I don't know the numbers, but crazy number of applications pending for processing. So you would, you, you would say that how long will this China, it'll take for e V five to process for this Chinese person?
[00:24:41] You know, I've heard numbers in 15 years, 20 years, 25 years. Horror stories. So as a. what used to be a Chinese market and no other country essentially. I mean, we can look at the statistics, but I think, I'm pretty sure I'm, I'm right. It became a no Chinese market , and it got replaced by India, Vietnam, Korea, you know, Brazil, Russia, you know, all the other countries.
[00:25:09] So once the product started to be marketed in other places, so obvious. People have started hearing it. So the, the, but your question was how you know, what, what countries, so Chi China is has been the, the prominent still is in a, in a way because obviously, you know, these people have pending applications.
[00:25:34] But now with the new law just as an. The Chinese market is picking up again because there is a carve out in the new law for a type of targeted employment area. So do you remember what I said about targeted employment area? I said that targeted employment area, which enjoys less investment amount. In other words, not the million 50 in the new law, but 800,000.
[00:26:02] It has three different categories, infrastructure. Rural or just a regular, you know, targeted employment area with, you know, experiencing a low on high unemployment, more than, more than normal, 150%. So the rural ver version version has been allocated 2000 of the, of the 10,000 visas.
[00:26:28] Wendy: And for, what is that?
[00:26:29] What area? Rural.
[00:26:30] Marko: Rural, rural project. So, oh, wow. So you're in Montana, you're in Utah, you're in some you know, and I, I, I don't exactly definition is maybe the, the population I think is like less than 20,000 or something. Maybe, you know, I mean, there, there is a official definition of what rural means, as long as your area where the project is going to be.
[00:26:53] Designated that that area is designated as rural, then that project enjoys this special treatment of 2000 of the 10,000 visas. And what happens is that they get allocated special treatment and they're not subject to this retro regression that we are talking about for the Chinese. So there is a huge demand for these kind of projects Now, good ones of.
[00:27:21] By the, by the Chinese. And in addition, because of the because of the concurrent filing that I already spoke about, a student, a Chinese student, for example, here by investing in a rural project, can essentially within a year, year and a half, whatever get himself I mean, I mean, What a year?
[00:27:44] Probably in six months. Six months he can get a a work permit. Wow. A travel and yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So, and, and the, and the green card will be much faster because they are gonna be able to the, the visa, visa, the, the will be available on a rural project.
[00:28:02] Wendy: Okay. So there's kind of three areas people can invest in infrastructure.
[00:28:08] Rural development. And then what was the third one?
[00:28:12] Marko: Standard like what we've always had targeted employment area. In other words, the area is experiencing 150% of the national average in unemployment. So necessarily in national leverage. Employment is, let's say, I don't know today what it is, say 3%.
[00:28:31] So this area is experiencing. Four and a half percent. Now, let me say something on the side there is also the area and adjacent municipalities to that area. Maybe it's just gonna get too technical. So there is the area and then there is the there is adjacent areas that are touching this, right?
[00:28:57] Yeah. Mm-hmm. . So the old. Allowed you to be able to do gerrymandering and have the area as big as you want. Right. So in other words, not only this area where the project is not only the area that is touching it, but an area that is touching that, that is touching that. So you could have the entire US if you wanted to.
[00:29:23] I was literally a loophole. So the new law eliminated. In the law, you can still for calculating whether you are eligible for targeted employment area. You can still use an adjacent municipality, whatever we call, uh, msa, I think it's called. Okay,
[00:29:41] Wendy: Marco, I'm gonna jump you cuz you are obviously getting too technical.
[00:29:45] If I ever need a visa, you are the person to call cause it's going so down into the details. But I wanna jump us back,
[00:29:51] Marko: right? Global market, sorry, I knew this is gonna get too technical. I, when
[00:29:55] Wendy: you gonna get too technical, I apologi, I'll give you a, I wanna pull this back in because part of me looks at it and says, wow, this is just another way.
[00:30:08] And hang with me for this thought. It's another way for the rich to get richer. It's a way for people to bypass immigration by giving money to the United States. So it's a, it's a way to buy a visa, but on the other hand, there's huge advantages for people in global marketing to get that cross-cultural experience.
[00:30:33] Can you comment on both those view.
[00:30:36] Marko: Well, the richer is not getting richer, first of all. I mean, I don't know what your definition of rich is, but I'll tell you where the. Wealth for e B five. So the where, how wealthy, a typical e b five investor is. Let's, let's let, let's, so obviously if you're going to invest almost a million dollars with the expenses and all that, we're talking about $900,000.
[00:31:00] So you should have at least a million in your, that's, that's your number that is just gonna go and probably be locked up for five to seven years. Mm-hmm. . That would
[00:31:09] Wendy: be my definition of global wealth is anybody who has a million dollars they can put into something that's locked up for five
[00:31:16] Marko: years. So how much, so how much do they have?
[00:31:17] So, so they obviously have to have a few, a few of those. Because if they lock us up and then they have no money to, to, to live on, they are not wealthy. Right. Most
[00:31:27] Wendy: people in the world don't have that. We're talking the top one
[00:31:29] Marko: to 2%, right? Right. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. So, so, so they, their typical investment is ma I mean, the, the wealth is like three to 10 million maybe.
[00:31:38] if you really push it for 15. But any anybody that is that has wealth above that number is not doing e B five. At least I, I haven't seen them. There's other alternatives for them, such as, you know what we talked about in the very beginning of this conversation, doing the, the, the original way of e B five.
[00:31:58] They can come here, they open up a business. They can hire 10 people or more. Why not? They don't invest a million dollars. They invest 10 million, you know, you know, they invest 50 million. So there are there and there are certain people like that. So those are not the, those are not the, the people we're talking about here.
[00:32:19] We're talking about the, the more I mean the guy is investing a million dollars, maybe has a couple other, you know on the, on the on, on the side. I think he's not getting richer in the sense that, I mean, all he wants is to be able to live here and he wants to be able to work here, and he's anxiously waiting for the money to come back.
[00:32:41] When it comes, it gets tied up for the five, seven years. But this method allows him to get employment, so he's getting a green card, and with this green card he can get a. either. Obviously he puts up his own company and he doesn't have the obligation to create, you know, 10 jobs, 20 jobs, because that obligation has been diffused to the regional center.
[00:33:05] So now he can have your typical, you know, small, small little business here and he can make a living. Oh. So and of us, you know, let's say the United States side, you know, the beneficiary of this. You are creating jobs. It's, it's very important. I mean, you, you, you, you know, 3000 investment. The investors is creating 30,000 jobs, 30,000, you know, 10.
[00:33:30] And most projects have a buffer. At least 30, 40, 50%, some even higher. So you're talking about 50,000 jobs per year, maybe more that are being created through this system. So U US is also benefiting out of this, there's no question. Okay.
[00:33:47] Wendy: And what about the individuals? , you know, what kind of roles do they go into and how are they benefiting from, you know, so now tie it into the global marketing.
[00:33:56] Are they getting into global business? Are they doing more local business? What do they learn from living in the United States? Do they stay in the United States? These are all the kind of questions I have about the, the people who are
[00:34:07] Marko: going through this. They, they try to do what they did back in their countries if they're not retired, you know, if they are in the age that and we are talking about, again, a very small stroke section because I already am on record that 80% are are students are.
[00:34:23] So we're talking about a smaller amount number of people. Well, yeah,
[00:34:27] Wendy: no, I'm talking about the students too.
[00:34:29] Marko: I mean, if 80% of the, the students get their, I mean the students. Having a life here, just like a regular American who goes to college and whatever, you know, specialty. They, the, they, they're it in it, they're in legal, they're in med school.
[00:34:45] I mean, they're in, you know what, what specialty they're in every specialty. . And, and they, you know what basically the e b five provides them is freedom. So once they get the green card, even an application, Wendy, you know, the, the fact that you have an application pending is makes the job search much, much easier.
[00:35:08] I mean, I went with myself, you know, I, I, I came here, you know, without, without the green card and I graduated and you. When, when I was doing interviewing up until the dreaded question that used to come to me. So how are you planning to, you know, work for us? Like, in other words, we like you, you know, you, you have the skills, how you, how you gonna work for us?
[00:35:30] So I would say, you know, I was hoping that you would sponsor me, , and they go like, we'll be back to you. We'll, we'll we will, we will get back to. , that was the last thing that I would hear from. We will get back to you. So since this, you, you won't, you won't hear this with a, with a e B five applicant, when they say, how are you planning to work for us?
[00:35:50] He's not gonna say, I was hoping that you would sponsor me. He will say, I have an EB5 application. And guess what? I just got my labor certificate approved because I applied, you know, three months, six months ago. I can work for you. , this is huge because the alternative is that they can work as an O P T, you know, whether the O P T is optional practical training.
[00:36:13] Mm-hmm. . So on a non STEM student, you know, who's not science technology engineering or math. These are stem. STEM is, you know, those four areas. If you are not one of those, you get one year. That's it. One year of O P t. After that, you gotta go. Your country stem gets three years, but either way, the employer, you know, is going to train you, is gonna spend mo time on you, money on you to, to, you know, and then all of a sudden you gotta go back because you don't have the right visa.
[00:36:45] Now, the H one B, which was very popular, you know, in my time, you know, when, when, when, when I went through this process is now subject to. . So the employer gives you a job offer as a, as you know, when you're, you know, graduating your job offer, but your name has to be picked from the lottery. It's 25% chances, 30% chances that your name will be picked if it's not picked Quebec again.
[00:37:15] So the e b five gives tremendous advantages to these students who are graduating to be able to, you know, go into the. that they are trained in.
[00:37:27] Wendy: Okay. And what's the advantage to to companies for hiring people with this experience with multicultural experience?
[00:37:39] Marko: The tremendous advantage, right?
[00:37:41] Because, you know, without this, they will have to settle. Not for the best candidate, but the candidate who happens to have a work permit, meaning us citizen or a green card holder or whatever it is. But but with this, with this now all of a sudden for the company, the horizon is you know, much. In, in other words, they can hire merit based as opposed to based on merit as opposed to mm-hmm.
[00:38:08] You know, who has, who, who, who, who has work permit and who, who can actually work here and who cannot. And, and you know, I, I am sure you're aware that, you know, the best universities are full of international student. Yeah, I mean, huge. And so I mean the, the, the employers wanna be able to hire them if these international students are good.
[00:38:31] Right. And that's what America is about, right? So you, you wanna be able to hire them but you cannot. . So if, if, if the future, there is legislation that says in England came up with this in, in England, they came up with this. They said that if you are in from a very you know, prominent university and you have you know qualifications, in other words we will, we will allow you, you know, we will give you work permit here in this country.
[00:38:56] We don't have.
[00:38:58] Wendy: Oh, okay. Now when did England do that? Was that
[00:39:00] Marko: after breakfast? Very, very recently. Very recently. . Very, very, very recently. Very recently.
[00:39:06] Wendy: I'm sure, because they lost all the people that were coming in from Europe to work because of that. Yeah. Very recently. Yeah. So yeah, so this is, this is fabulous.
[00:39:16] It's not a direct correlation to global marketing, but it has so many repercussions for it. Because if you get people with international experience, American trained and they've got connections back in their home comp countries, they can certainly help US companies grow. So it's
[00:39:34] Marko: a hundred.
[00:39:35] Yeah, I mean for, for making us companies international and for us companies to be able to have you know, presence in back the, in, in the, in their home countries. This is a, this is a huge thing for globalization. I believe, yeah.
[00:39:52] Wendy: Yeah, yeah. All right. I we're, we're running short of time, and I'm not sure I gave you this warning that at the end of every Global Marketing Show podcast, we ask, what is your favorite word and favorite?
[00:40:05] I mean, you already. Speak Turkish and Latinos Spanish, and so, you know, it can, and English, so it can be a word in any of those languages or from any, any language you see. I'm rambling a little bit to give you time to think of your favorite foreign word you
[00:40:19] Marko: read, ble. Oh, oh, I, I, I have my word, you know.
[00:40:23] Okay. It's, it's I mean, you might wonder why I, I, I can't even tell you why my favorite word is carpus. Carpus Carpus. What does it mean? It means watermelon and it's what it means. Watermelon in Turkish. And all my kids, you know, the first Turkish, the for word they learned is carpus even before Mommy, mommy, daddy.
[00:40:53] And that's now you asked me, I mean, it's obvious, I guess because I love watermelon. I can, I can finish a whole watermelon in one, one sitting. No matter how big it's, and I know, and you know, I know it did Hebrew, I mean, I know, I know carpus in many, many, many languages that I don't speak that well, but I know, I know, I know how to say it.
[00:41:15] So, h how would
[00:41:16] Wendy: you, you know, phonetically spell that for me so I can get the pronunciation right. How would
[00:41:21] Marko: you carpus, because you can k I guess the phonetically k a. R I mean, the way we spell it, we spell it in Turkish, K a r p u Z, which is quite car phone. Okay. But, but it's not that phonetic, I guess you wanna say maybe O U Z or carpus.
[00:41:43] No, that's good.
[00:41:44] Wendy: That's good. That's record recommendations for our listeners about our conversation today.
[00:41:54] Marko: Global recommendation or
[00:41:55] Wendy: visas or living internationally? , I'll leave it
[00:41:59] Marko: Wider. Re re recommendation? In what field? In your field? My field. In every field or final? I mean, I, I do not, not that I want to.
[00:42:10] I, I do agree with you that you. Correct. Translations are pretty important, and I'll tell you because of my own business I don't know if you had a chance to visit our website. We have 25 different languages there, and you know, not like, what did you say in 200 languages? What did you say?
[00:42:29] 200. Now we don't have 200, but we have the 25 that are probably relevant to EB5 from you know countries that. Have a influx from to, to United States, especially with EB5. And I was very careful not to just use Google Translate like some of my competitors have found the easy way.
[00:42:51] I did use you know, real people. Get it edited many, many, many times. And so I think, I think it's it's, it's pretty good. So, so I, I echo what you say all the time that you know, sometimes machine translations can, can be funny and can be embarrassing.
[00:43:11] And so so, so I agree with that and, and it's very relevant for our business, you know, I mean, in our business you are talking about people, you know, in the morning, in Brazil and the night in Vietnam, Korea, I mean all over the world, right? Right. And. and you know, you have to be cognizant. And if these people choose not to speak in English and they wanna speak in our local time, because it's easier for them, I mean, you know, we went through really, really tip of the iceberg, but this stuff can get really complicated, you know, when.
[00:43:44] Before you're gonna park from your $800,000 and you are gonna write that check, you really wanna understand every part of this, you know what's going to happen to you. So it's important that we address the people in their native tongue sometimes, and Yeah,
[00:44:00] Wendy: a couple of thoughts there is, is when you're addressing them in their native tongue.
[00:44:04] Rapport, International also offers telephone interpreting to help facilitate conversations. So Marco. Conversation has been absolutely fascinating and there may be people who are interested cuz we're the, the podcast, the global marketing show is downloaded in over 55 or 60 countries now.
[00:44:23] So where can people reach out to you if they're interested in connecting with you?
[00:44:28] Marko: They they can come to reach us through WhatsApp. I guess that's the easiest way. I mean, I don't mind giving the number out. It's 9 1 7 3 5 5. 9 2 51. That's the WhatsApp number. And they can of course write us at info I N F O at America, just like the country.
[00:44:50] America with a c E like Edward, B like boy, number five, E B five Visa, just like the credit card. V I S a.com. Info America eb five visa.com. That will be through email. They can go to our website WWW.AmericaEB5visa.com, and there's a contact form there. They can fill up the contact form and it will just come straight to our office and we will get back to them within 24 hours.
[00:45:20] Wendy: Fantastic. That's great. So if you are interested in learning more about the e b five visas or any of the visas, I'm sure he'd know exactly where to send you. So thank you for tuning into this episode of the Global Marketing Show. If you're interested in being a guest or a sponsor for the show, certainly reach out to us.
[00:45:39] You can go to global marketing show.com. It'll bring you to the landing page for it, and you can reach out to us on there. So thanks so much and we'll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.
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