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International Students Can Use US Investor Visa to Gain Green Card
A lesser-known immigration visa offers international students a path to U.S. colleges and universities — and a green card — but the price is affordable for only a few.
An EB-5, or Immigrant Investor Visa Program, does not restrict where or how much students work off-campus and allows them to stay in the country after graduation, both perks not available to F-1 student visa holders, according to EB-5 Daily, a website that aggregates news about the EB-5 program.
But in exchange for fewer restrictions, EB-5s have a daunting price tag — applicants must invest at least $500,000.
"There are a lot of wealthy international students who come to the U.S., and a lot of them are very motivated [to stay after graduation]," said Ishaan Khanna, a recent college graduate and EB-5 visa holder. "So, for them it makes sense."
A path to immigration
Khanna came to the U.S. from India on an F-1 student visa to study at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. As graduation approached, he started looking for ways to stay and work in the U.S.
"If I wanted to further my career, being in the U.S., especially close to Silicon Valley, was a no brainer," said Khanna, who was looking for jobs in the tech sector. He started researching EB-5 visas during his senior year.
WATCH: Ishaan Khanna Talks About EB-5 Visa
The EB-5 visa program was created in 1990 to encourage foreign investment and create jobs for American workers, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
To receive the visa, a foreigner must invest at least $500,000 either directly in a business or in a regional center, which is a private company that pools such investments.
"An EB-5 regional center is an economic unit, public or private, in the United States that is involved with promoting economic growth," according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). "Regional centers are designated by USCIS for participation in the Immigrant Investor Program."
Each investment qualifies only if it creates or preserves at least 10 full-time jobs.
The vast majority of EB-5 investors — in 2016, 91.5 percent — have chosen to invest in regional centers. Successful applicants receive a two-year green card that becomes permanent if the investment meets the job-creation standard.
But there is so little oversight of the EB-5 industry that it is open to abuse, critics say.
"I could speak for hours about the corruption in this program," said Republican Senator Charles Grassley, one of the program's most vocal critics.
"They [the investors] put up the money and they don't know what the money is being used for," said Lsu Khanh Pham, an immigration attorney. "Legally, the money is supposed to go into the venture and create jobs."
But sometimes, he said, the money is used to pay back previous loans, or it sits in the bank as collateral.
Criticisms
Sometimes the money is embezzled, according to some court cases. Documentation shows 287 regional centers whose contract with the U.S. government has been terminated for either failing to submit required information to USCIS or for no longer serving the purpose of promoting economic growth. This month, there were 1,382 approved regional centers.
Last year, the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a senior White House aide, was investigated for implying that their company's connection with the president could help their investors obtain green cards through the EB-5 program. The investigation is ongoing.
The appeal of a green card is undeniable. With a green card, a foreign student can "work, live, study, as freely as you want," Khanna said.
Students who hold a green card are much more attractive to employers, Khanna said.
"Let's' be honest, if you don't have a green card, it is really hard to get a job in America," he added.
"I interviewed for SpaceX and I remember making it through the first round of interviews," Khanna recalled about the company considered to be a leading innovator in space technology.
"And they looked at my application and they said, 'Oh you're not a citizen? You don't have a green card?' And I said 'no,' and they said, 'OK, this isn't going to work.'"
"Being able to work in the U.S. without requiring sponsorship is a big deal," he said.
USCIS can grant up to 10,000 EB-5 visas each year, but it is hard to get exact figures for how many students are in the U.S. on an EB-5.
"USCIS does not maintain these figures," a spokesperson for the agency said, speaking on background. A State Department representative, also speaking on background, directed VOA to its publicly available statistics, which do not include how many students hold an EB-5 visa.
"I would think several hundred students" get an EB-5 visa each year, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School and attorney for Miller Mayer LLP's immigration practice group. "But nobody knows for sure. It may only be a hundred."
However, Khanna, an EB-5 visa holder from India, said, "I do know a lot of people who do it, especially students."
Because regional centers profit from making investments on behalf of EB-5 applicants, they have a strong incentive to attract every investor they can, no matter how young.
On their websites, for example, the centers tout the virtues of EB-5 visas over traditional F-1 student visas.
The website of the U.S. Immigration Fund, one of the regional centers, included a post with the headline: "4 reasons why EB-5 visa program is the best for studying abroad in the U.S."
Where to invest
Although parents and families typically provide the money, students sometimes decide where to invest.
"That is probably the most daunting part of the EB-5 process for many investors," said Yale-Loehr, the immigration law professor.
"I compare it to a Rubik's Cube," he explained. "The immigration component has to line up with the [investment] component, which has to line up with the job creation element. ... Sometimes, if the students are majoring in business, they're very savvy."
But Khanna, who majored in applied-information systems management when he began the EB-5 process, said that determining where to invest was difficult. He spent months doing research and took advantage of resources on campus, "running up to finance professors to ask questions" during his senior year.
"I spoke to several investment issuers and I remember making this long spreadsheet, which listed all the different EB-5 projects and compared their pros and cons side by side," Khanna said.
He eventually invested in a Four Seasons hotel in Puerto Rico through a regional center named EB5 United, based in Santa Monica, California. He now works for EB5 United as the company's director of investor relations for India.
Although the USCIS has tried to protect against fraud, a 2015 Government Accountability Office report found that the agency needed to do even more to protect investors and discern how the program impacts the American economy.
Senator Grassley has frequently called for EB-5 reform and recently asked Congress to end regional centers altogether.
On Sept. 30, the program was extended until after the midterm elections but before the next Congress is seated in January. When the EB-5 program comes up for renewal on Dec. 7, President Trump and a lame-duck Congress will decide its fate. Until then, students looking for alternatives to an F-1 visa will be able to consider an EB-5, if they can afford it.
"If your family has resources, do it," Khanna advised.
And the investment Khanna made for his EB-5?
"It was pretty much my family's life savings which went into this," he said.
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Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
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