A few questions regarding the EB-5 visa. Is this still a realistic path to a green card, and if so, how complicated is the process if you want to take the targeted economic area route through a regional center? Do the investments through a regional center usually persist, or in other words, how high is the risk of the underlying business going bankrupt based on real experiences? There's plenty of articles about all of this online of course, but would be interested in hearing any first hand experience you might have.
The EB-5 is still an option although the process largely depends on the regional center/entity that you are going through and requires that you do real due diligence like you would any major investment. The EB-5 is also an area that at various times has been shut down or delayed because of government concerns about fraud and criminal activity.
Hi, I looked at the regional centre-dependent EB5 process but pivoted to the EB5 direct investment route. I have now bootstrapped a single food truck, and we are looking forward to launch it next month. Can such kind of business setup qualify me for O1 instead ?
At my day job, I am a software manager in FAANG.
O1 requires you have considerable outstanding achievements [0], such as widely recognized international rewards, being featured in major publications, scholarly articles, or etc. I don't see how a food truck would help you qualify for any of those. Demanding a high salary, which I assume you do at FAANG, would only tick one box, but to qualify you need to tick at least three.
As applied, although still high, the O-1 requirements are easier than they appear so it's always worth evaluating particularly for the founder of a business. And an O-1 can be for almost any occupation, from a hair colorist to a cancer researcher.
It's surprising to many people what backgrounds/jobs can qualify for O-1 classification so it's not inconceivable that your creation of the food truck business could be a platform to get you an O-1. This would require an O-1 analysis of your qualifications and this business.
