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Raising the Price of Admission
I find myself immensely frustrated by Trump's recent moves to cut down on immigration, especially replacing the EB5 with his new golden ticket scheme.
I've always wanted to move to the States, but by virtue of being Indian, and in a profession with strict regulatory requirements, it was never easy. As of right now, I can't sit for the USMLE if I wanted to, but I believe that is a problem my uni could solve, unfortunately I'm locked into the UK for at least 3 more years and don't have the time to breathe down their necks.
If I wanted to spend $1 million for the old EB5, I'd probably have to sell a significant fraction of my familial assets, and they're not mine yet, I have a sibling and parents to think of. The fact that we even have that much, when my father made $50k at the peak of his career as a OBGYN surgeon, represents a lifetime of my parents being frugal and living beneath their means. My dad started out from scratch, a penniless refugee, and all his life he worked tirelessly to make sure his kids wouldn't have to work as hard as he did. To a degree, he's succeeded. I nearly make as much as he does, but that's virtue of grinding my ass off to escape India. I had to settle for the UK, whereas I'd much rather be in the States.
The EB-5 program already functioned as a high barrier to entry, requiring not just capital but also the ability to invest in ways that met the job creation criteria. By raising the price to $5 million, the U.S. is effectively signaling that it no longer wants "entrepreneurial upper-middle-class" immigrants - it only wants the ultra-wealthy. The problem, is that the truly ultra-wealthy already have multiple options. The US is relatively unique in dual-taxation, and has heavier taxes overall when compared to some of the alternatives. They can buy citizenship in other countries (Malta, St. Kitts, etc.), take advantage of residence-by-investment programs in the EU, or just maintain an arsenal of visas that allow them to live anywhere they please. The U.S. loses out on exactly the kind of people who were willing to put down roots and contribute significantly to the economy while still needing the opportunities that U.S. citizenship provides.
If Trump (or any administration) wanted a truly meritocratic system, they should be auctioning off a limited number of economic immigrant slots each year. That would at least allow market forces to determine the actual value of U.S. residency. A points-based system, like Canada’s or Australia’s, could also make more sense: prioritizing skilled professionals over sheer wealth. A million already strongly filters would-be immigrants. Five is exorbitant, especially if it's a flat sum.
(Let's leave aside the other requirements, such as running a business that creates a certain number of jobs)
Jevon's paradoxmakes us expect that increasing the price of a good by 5 times will not 5x the revenue. It'll decrease it in expectation. If Trump prizes himself as a businessman, this should be clear to him.
Even the abolition of birthright citizenship strikes me as a violation of the American ethos. It was certainly being abused, anchor babies being a case in point, but when even green cards are this hard to get, prospective skilled migrants greatly appreciate the peace of mind that their kids are entitled to citizenship provides.
End it for illegal immigrants if you have to, why lump in everyone else there legitimately? I wouldn't mind people using their visitor visas to get a fast one in being debarred too, but I look at the current state of affairs with great dismay.
At any rate, I'm not an American. I do wish I was, and my impression is that most of you would be happy to have me. Well, I'm used to life being rough, and the UK isn't the worst place I could be. I still think that even from an absolutely monetary point of view, this is a bad plan.
I hope I've made a decent case for why you're not getting much out filtering the immigrants for quality at that point, and the ones who are that loaded are probably not nearly as keen. They're easily Global Citizens for whom nationality is a formality.
Well, I'm still going to see if I manage to figure out the USMLE thing by the time my training in the UK ends, but there must be thousands of skilled immigrants in a similar boat, just noticing a rather significant leak in it. Then they're confronted by a sign at Eliis Island that just any ocean-crossing vessel won't do, they need a yacht. We don't deserve to be clubbed in with those who break the rules.
Yes.
Are you single? Have you considered a sham marriage to an American woman (or man)? I've seen that work fairly well.
That’s still expensive and risky. Sham marriage would be immigration fraud, a crime. This means that you need to compensate your co-conspirators generously to go along with it, because it requires a lot of effort and legal risk, and binds them to you for years. Ultimately, the investment visa might be cheaper in practice when you adjust for risk.
I know multiple people who got their green cards through a fake marriage, and they each paid $10,000. I was offered that much to do it myself, but I turned it down because I wanted to keep the option of marrying a mail-order-bride for real. Now, granted, that was before inflation, but even now I don't think it would be more than $20,000-$30,000, plus a few thousand more for the lawyer and fees. Definitely cheaper one million dollars, let alone five.
30 k$ seems pretty low for a crime whose default punishment (for the citizen, not for the alien) under the US Sentencing Guidelines is a prison sentence of 8–14 months plus a fine of 4–40 k$. I have a hard time believing that enforcement is so lax that people will commit such an easily-trackable felony for so little.
It seems very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Just don't write anything down.
"Oh it was love at first sight, so we married shortly after meeting."
"Our marriage wasn't very close, but things don't always match your expectations."
"Yes, I did end up 20-30k richer than you might expect after the divorce, but that's well within the normal variance."
It would be a lot easier to prove that someone had a sham Sacrament of Holy Matrimony than a sham legal marriage because civil standards are incredibly lax.
It isn't that simple. Court opinions on this topic show that the immigration authorities conduct intrusive interviews and investigations to check whether the marriage appears genuine. How did you meet? How did you propose? Where was the honeymoon? What is your spouse's birthday? Do you live with your spouse? Do you share a bank account? Et cetera.
@dr_analog @hydroacetylene
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