EB-5 New York State, LLC, based in Buffalo, N.Y., achieved a major milestone when the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) approved I-829 petitions filed by immigrant investors in its first EB-5 financed project. These immigrant investors contributed to the financing of Kaleida Health’s Gates Vascular Institute. By approving the I-829 petitions, USCIS agreed that the Company’s investment did, in fact, achieve the EB-5 program’s job creation requirements by creating at least 200 new jobs in the community.
The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program is an innovative financing program designed to create new US jobs by encouraging immigrants to invest into job creating projects. This major milestone in the EB-5 Program has been reached by only 17 of the approximately 400 Regional Centers throughout the US, making the Buffalo-based company a leader nationally, and the only Regional Center serving Upstate New York to have achieved this milestone.
“Our first EB-5 investment project provided financing to Kaleida Health for the Gates Vascular Institute on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. We are very happy to have helped Kaleida Health achieve its goals for the community, while at the same time meeting the US Government’s job creation requirements to create at least 200 new jobs in the community. Based on our successful experience, we have since used the EB-5 program to raise capital for other job-creating activities in Upstate New York,” EB-5 New York State’s President Bill Gresser stated.
EB-5 financing can be used for construction or permanent financing, or as Kaleida used it, to finance new equipment required by the development of the Gates Vascular Institute. In addition to supporting Kaleida Health’s Gates Vascular Institute, the Company has used the EB-5 program to help create thousands of additional jobs by raising millions of dollars of EB-5 capital for other job-creating projects in Upstate New York.
David Andersson, President of the IIUSA trade association representing EB-5 Regional Centers nationally stated: “We congratulate EB-5 New York for successfully using the EB-5 program to create jobs in Upstate New York. In reaching this I-829 approval milestone, EB-5 New York State joins 12 successful IIUSA members in completing the job creation / investor immigration cycle – a process taking three years or longer.”