For industry experts Reid Thomas and Jill Jones, the EB-5 program is in a transitional state right now, especially with the growing backlog caused by a lack of visa capacity, a pause in new investments caused by the implementation of new Regulations, and a looming sunset date mere months away.

Facing a difficult few years ahead, what can Regional Centers and EB-5 service providers do to shift course and emerge intact on the other side?

Reid, who is Chief Revenue Officer and Managing Director of JTC Americas, and Jill, who is General Counsel of JTC Americas, are planning to discuss this chasm and more during a webinar they are hosting on Wednesday, March 31st at 11:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. ET. The event is free and all EB-5 stakeholders are encouraged to attend.

“We think it’s important to focus not on the sunset date itself, but the fact that the EB-5 industry is becoming far more sophisticated,” said Jill, who is a frequent speaker at IIUSA events and former IIUSA Board of Directors member. “Both the investors and the projects are having to really go back and look at how they’re doing their business. Several years ago, we saw a lot of developers coming into EB-5 as a quick source of capital. It moved a lot faster, and it was much less expensive than going the traditional loan route. That’s not going to work moving forward. There’s going to be a lot more due diligence and reporting involved and that the time it will take to navigate the immigration process won’t work for the quick money client.”

“Unless Congress is able to address the capacity challenge, which I don’t see getting resolved in the June timeframe, the stakeholders will continue to have to deal with the reality of lower inflows,” said Reid, recipient of IIUSA’s “Industry Game Changer” award for his visionary work in the EB-5 space.

“So, to prepare for that, there’s a lot of things I think that regional centers, and other stakeholders can do,” added Reid. “The backlogs facing new investments in EB-5 offerings could be north of 10 years now. And so, I would encourage EB-5 stakeholders to really think about what kinds of value-added services we could all provide to investors in the process of their journey from investment to ultimate permanent residency or even citizenship. And that’s where I think there’s some good business opportunities for us all.”

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Watch Reid Thomas and Jill Jones present our latest EB-5 webinar, “Preparing for the New EB-5 Era Together” today!

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