New Book on EB-5

As of January 26, 2010, one can purchase or kindle Green Card via the Red Carpet: A Comprehensive Guide to Immigrating to the U.S. by Investing in an EB-5 Regional Center by Stephen Parnell and Andrew Bartlett. The book works hard for its “comprehensive” title, judging from the table of contents viewable on amazon, with sections covering reasons to immigrate to the US, all immigrant and non-immigrant visa categories, the history and types of EB-5, issues to consider in evaluating regional centers, the EB-5 immigration process, and relocation advice. The authors also have a website www.WhichEB5.com, which offers free consulting to potential EB-5 investors and fee-based promotion to Regional Centers. The website includes a lot of text on EB-5 topics and rather little useful information, but maybe because they want me to buy the book. It’s difficult to provide current and correct information for a field as volatile as EB-5, and the website falters a bit in this area, claiming a “green card in six months” timeline for example and reporting the number of regional centers variously as about 30 and about 50 (in fact now over 80). If I were a lawyer or Regional Center I might still buy the book though for the final relocation section, which appears to offer useful practical advice for those time-consuming “how do I make it in the USA” questions from taxation to credit to education to health care that investors do ask.