Mona and Mark are joined by Sam Udani and David Hirson to discuss News from China’s EB-5 Market.
As one of the biggest EB-5 markets, keeping abreast of the latest news in China from potential investor interest to updates on the arrest of Wailian Group President, Linda He, and its impact on the Chinese market as well as difficulties investors face transferring EB-5 funds is key to understanding the overall EB-5 market and where it is headed.
Join EB-5 Investment Voice’s resident expert Mona Shah as she and other industry leaders David Hirson and Sam Udani discuss all things EB-5 China-related news.
Both David Hirson and Sam Udani have decades of experience in the EB-5 industry, David Hirson as a leading immigration attorney and partner at David Hirson & Partners, LLP and Sam Udani, CEO of ILW.com and expert as to the Chinese EB-5 market.
In this episode, Mona and her special guests Sam Udani and David Hirson breakdown the potential fallout from the Wailian arrest, issues in transferring EB-5 investment funds out of China and expert tips on evaluating American businesses for investment.
Judging American businesses for success is a very difficult endeavor. So how do you mitigate risk in that context? – Sam Udani
Special Guests
Sam Udani is a well-known figure in the EB_5 industry, with extensive experience and knowledge of the Chinese EB-5 market. As the CEO of ILW.com, for the past twenty years, he is constantly in touch with the latest developments and has valuable insights into the market and the industry. Udani has been involved in the immigration community in the USA for most of his career spanning three decades, involved in immigration politics and policy and covering all manner of immigration into the United States. As Publisher of ILW.com, he directs all activities of the website and newspaper with over 50,000+ pages of free information on immigration law that receives 250,000 visitors per month. Under Mr. Udani’s direction, ILW has conducted 600+ CLE seminars, published over two dozen immigration law books and conducted hundreds of immigration events in over a dozen countries.
David Hirson is a pioneer in the EB-5 industry who was one of the first practitioners to file an EB-5 petition. Serving as a co-founder of Gravitas and the Managing Partner of full-service immigration law firm David Hirson & Partners, LLP, he has been practicing for four decades, helping innumerable companies and individual investors manage their immigration processes while advising on regional center applications and green card applications for investors under the EB-5 investor visa category. Hirson further has experience assisting companies with start-up expansion, mergers and acquisitions relating to immigration law, compliance and case processing. Awarded the International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers (Corporate Immigration), Southern California Super Lawyers, America’s Best Lawyers, and Best Immigration Lawyers in the United States by Best of the U.S., annually from 2006-20014, Hirson is one of the most sought-after lawyers in the EB-5 space. He is a member of various prominent associations and has served as Chapter Chair of the Southern California Chapter of AILA, among other roles.
Some highlights from the episode:
Sam: “In terms of volume, I’m utterly not seeing any kind of slowdown whatsoever [in the Chinese market].
David: “I’m seeing agents are telling investors and each other that, look, we have licenses and we are happy to help people through the immigration process. We are happy to source funds. We are happy to put different projects in front of the investors, but we’re not licensed to do funds transfers. That’s not what we do and we stay out of it.”
David: “The U.S. government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to become the police of other countries exchange control, and they are insisting on full compliance in those countries for the transfer of funds.”
Mona: “Regardless of what dampening effects might exist in reality, what also exists is a massive explosion of demand in China. And both these realities are playing together. And that is often the case in markets where you have conflicting trends and they both coexist at the same time. Nevertheless, there is a net effect between those trends. Once you add it all up, you have a final direction as to which the market is moving and a kind of momentum by which it is moving in that direction. And there is no doubt that the market is moving up and is moving up quickly.”
Sam: “Some of the largest players in this field, in the top five, have had huge bankruptcies, each bankruptcy affecting hundreds of Chinese investors. And that has really shaken up the market.”
David: “I think the explosion, whatever we saw so far, was small as compared to what has happened after April and what will be coming in the months to come. But Congress wanted a rural swing.”
Mona: “Sam, are you seeing that there is an issue relating to perhaps real estate? That there isn’t such an appetite for real estate the way there used to be?”
Sam: “The problem with rural, the problem people are having no tin terms of demand by investors, because they, as I think Mona you rightly observed, are being steered by the agents and are counting on the agents to steer them correctly, but it’s mostly because the agents are really struggling with the different asset classes that constitute major investment opportunities in rural America. We are seeing asset classes which have been traditionally almost completely absent in EB-5. You’re seeing agriculture projects, oil and gas projects.”
Sam: “The quantity of investor losses of projects going belly up, completely unexpected projects [. . . ] that has caused heartburn in China. If size is not the way, if just going to the top players in America, is not the way to secure the safety of the investments for our investors, then what is the way?”