Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency
economist.com
economist.com
> the Kushners' company held an event at a ritzy hotel in Beijing to encourage Chinese investments for a development project in New Jersey.
> "Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States," read a brochure at the event...
> A spokesperson for Kushner Companies later apologized for the poor optics, but just two months later, CNN reported that the business was again invoking Kushner's status as a senior White House aide to attract investors.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sec-launches-probe-into-kush...
How long would Google keep around a senior executive if he was running a side-business in SEO?
> During the presentation, Meyer reminded investors of her brother's recent role in American politics: "In 2008, my brother Jared Kushner joined the family company as CEO," Meyer told a crowd, adding he "recently moved to Washington to join the administration."
> The comments coincided with a visual display, which included a photograph of Trump.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/20/politics/draft-kushner-visas/...
Pretty much as I expected; media telling the truth to leave you believing a lie.
Open to all -- bring $$$ and drop em in the local economy.
See also: Vancouver housing issues.
Hillary Clinton's brother, Tony Rodham, and her 2008 campaign manager and former governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, were involved in a Green-Card investment scheme that looks pretty shady. Rich Chinese people were told they were investing in an electric car startup. With political big shots involved, they thought the scheme was legitimate and had political backing. The money disappeared with little to show in the way of actual electric-car development, and the investors sued.
1. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/28/greentech-automoti...
2. https://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/report-cites-favoriti...
The main thing missing here is that Kushner has a direct ownership stake. Mayorkas was just, uh, helping out a buddy? It's not great!
(also, a hilarious turn of phrase: "Rodham’s sister was secretary of state")
Rodham was apparently President and CEO of an investment firm backing the electric car company.
Only mentioned as an aside, but for Vancouverites, this has been very painful.
Uniquely Quebec manages its own immigration (let's not get into it) and they have an investor immigration scheme that essentially sells citizenship for a pittance. Of course since persons have freedom of movement there's nothing stopping persons who buy citizenship in Quebec for moving to Vancouver, which almost all of them do.
Accordingly while British Columbia has enacted various foreign investor taxes to try to limit the distortions from foreign money on the real estate market, there remain significant impacts of foreign wealth in Vancouver and BC.
Sadly federal politicians aren't in much of a rush to annoy the Quebec government by playing hardball on this issue as Canada has an election coming up and Quebec has heaps of seats in play.
So yeah immigrants are great, but it has been abundantly clear that the rich persons buying citizenship are doing so just to have a passport of convenience and buy land as a safe investment and the gains for the rest of Canadian society from that are weak.
Citation?
I mean, presumably there's a citable study out there somewhere.
That immigrants in general pay in more taxes sounds plausible. That refugees are a greater net positive (taxes in minus benefits out) than investors, who are basically all wealthy enough to use minimal government services, seems like a stretch.
> According to CIC, investor immigrants reported average earnings of about $18,000 in their first year and just $28,000 after 15 years. After three years, only 47 per cent of such immigrants reported any income. The Canadian average is 67 per cent.
> Meanwhile, refugees (those who come to Canada under hardship) reported first-year average incomes of $20,000 and after 15 years those incomes rose to $30,000. Two-thirds of refugees reported income by their fifth year, on par with Canada’s average.
> After five years, only 39 per cent reported income, suggesting investor immigrants may leave the country (or declare non-residency) after the citizenship process is complete.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/refugees-reporting-high...
It was more of visa-for-a-loan program than anything else. Complete bullshit.
Foreign capital, when invested into a limited, rationed, speculative resource, that is also required for life - like say, housing, is a ----ing nightmare.
This has not stopped housing costs from going through-the-roof. People are buying houses to speculate, new residents (foreign rich, or migrating techies) are buying houses with staggering amounts of money - amounts that existing residents could never hope to save up.
[0] https://komonews.com/news/local/home-prices-dropping-in-the-...
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-ar...
This can really distort things, because it's a lot of foreign capital coming in without the productive industry and income taxes being present. Then later it becomes a social services burden.
Many of those kids do grow up to become awesome Canadians, so that's good though. But some of them choose to move back abroad after getting their citizenship and education, when it becomes time to work...
Exporting housing services is a great business and a tremendous opportunity that is too rarely framed as such. https://slate.com/business/2013/05/exporting-housing-service...
"nine of 10 recent Chinese immigrants arrive in Metro Vancouver with enough money to immediately buy homes. But only half hold down jobs during their first five years in Canada, while four of 10 report they’re surviving on low incomes."
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-how...
Ritzy Richmond neighbourhood where many are ‘poor’
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Part+Ritzy+Richmond+nei...
I wonder how long it will be before the government decides to change their data format so immigrant employment numbers can no longer be associated with country of origin, under the guise of "privacy" or something like that.
https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housin...
> The Dymaxion House was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times — all of them factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended to be suitable for any site or environment and to use resources efficiently. A key design consideration of the design was ease of shipment and assembly.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house
Nearly a century later... "Prefab housing complex for UC Berkeley students goes up in four days" Aug., 2018 ~ https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-compl...
An interesting detail: "Kennedy notes that the cost of trucking to Berkeley from the port of Oakland was more expensive than the cost of shipping from Hong Kong."
Before we go on a building spree, I say we should get a decent handle on the total amount of foreign money in play.
A three story apartment building in my town burned down because the decorative mulch outside caught fire and spread to the building. Making it worse sprinkler systems are not mandatory in Canada for three story apartment buildings. Luckily all 52 seniors living in the apartment building got out there were no deaths.
The fire chief said the building went up fast because of the materials used in the building.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-fire...
The big problem of course that there are real physical limits to the rate of housing development where people have to touch the process eg. inspections, design, labour limits and so 'just add more supply' isn't really a solution when the limited supply you can build are for-sale condos literally being directly marketed overseas and out of the grasp of locals with mere local incomes (Vancouver has pretty much the lowest median income of major Canadian cities).
Like I said, Vancouver isn't SF. Even with areas of the city untouched by redevelopment, there's still thousands upon thousands of units in the pipeline being developed in the areas the city has up zoned over the last 10 years. That's just the CoV proper, never mind the huge amounts of development next door in all the surrounding cities.
On top of this, Metro Vancouver is still a young enough that there's massive areas of untouched brownfield and greenfield that are being redeveloped as well, such as Jericho, NEFC and the Squamish lands around Vanier Park.
Thus we're getting some utility out of recouping lost value from the tax, but the disincentive the tax would have represented has come in too late to avoid the huge property value spike, ideally we'll see those inflated values decrease somewhat as real estate as a savings account becomes less attractive and starts depreciating the parked value quicker.
There is also the issue that it's hard to audit residency currently.
Their website say 1.2M$ ? That’s a pittance ?
That Quebec is the only province that avails itself of the opportunity to attract immigrants to itself rather than relying on the federal government is to its credit. If the Anglophone provinces don’t feel like exercising the powers they and Quebec share that’s their problem, not Quebec’s.
Most every province seems to have some sort of provincial nominee program in place for granting permanent residence. They're just not usually designed for investors.
Example of Ontario: https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-immigrant-nominee-progra...
I went through the program (I'm a PR now).
It takes many years, and then many years again to get citizenship. You have to work, etc. It's not even close to the same as the old "investor" program which was literally buy citizenship if you are rich.
- limited country representation to a X% only
- added a law that enforces that immigrants are intending to reside in QC and even now must learn French
- investment amount was raised
I also think we should staple green-cards to the back of people who receive higher-education degrees in the united states.
Unfortunately our immigration system rewards the rule-breakers and encourages people to lie. Like many things in life, the honest people get hosed.
For the most part pretty much everyone in the immigration system gets screwed, other than the wealthiest, whether they buy their residency, or they hire the workers who are either here illegally or legally.
Or do border guards have a stack of asylum application forms to hand out at crossings?
I don’t blame or judge anyone. Like I said the laws reward those who break the law and punish those who try and follow the law.
We have a different image of China and China has done a great job posing as next superpower but the reality is very different on the ground.
Rich Chinese want to get away from China by paying whatever price they can afford, this is not surprising at all!
No conflict between these. Lots of Americans have second passports, including Peter Thiel.
Thus, as with other countries that don't allow dual citizenship (e.g., Japan, India, Austria, Malaysia, Singapore) getting another nationality is probably a stronger exit signal.
Of course, most schemes start by giving permanent residency, which is different and sort of the best of both worlds.
My girlfriend and her family have Taiwanese, Chinese and US citizenship/passports though. Wonder how that works
No such restriction exists at least generally.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
The US allows dual citizenship: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/dual-citizenship-all...
> The United States will not ask naturalizing citizens to take any steps to formally renounce the citizenship of their home country. Nor will it stop U.S. citizens from later adopting citizenship in another country – though if their intention is to give up U.S. citizenship, they can certainly do so. You may continue to vote in your home country, if it allows it.
> All this does not mean that the U.S. will tolerate divided loyalties. Dual citizens must obey U.S. laws, uphold the U.S. Constitution, and in every other way adhere to the naturalization oath that they take. They are also required by the I.N.A. to carry their U.S. passport when leaving the U.S., and to present it upon reentry.
> I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;...
They won't require you to formally tell the other country you are renouncing it, which is good enough for practical purposes, since most other countries don't allow you to renounce your citizenship simply by telling some US bureaucrat you renounce and abjure it.
It's also an easy vector for foreign states to become 'addicted' to investment money generated from their industrial base and I.P. 'borrowing.'
Not everyone has an equal opportunity to make it big in China. If you care about freedom and a better future for your children, make money and move out!
He has no credibility when it comes to immigration.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-...
This is a thread about immigration. If Thiel's opinions on immigration are to be considered, then his own behaviour in that regard are absolutely relevant.
No, it's not. It might be germane if (1) his behavior demonstrated that he was particylt untrustworthy on this topic and (2) fact claims were being made that could only be accepted based on trusting Thiel.
It might also be germane if we were discussing the credibility of his claim to believe in the position he lays out rather than the merits of that position (this is actual a special case of the preceding.)
It's also potentially useful as a filter as to whether it's worthwhile to both considering his opinions and participating in the discussion in the first place; many fallacies are pragmatically useful in terms of whittling down the universe of ideas to decide which one are more likely to ve worth spending more time analyzing. But once you jump into the discussion on the merits, well, there is a reason fallacies have been identified.
The comment is definitely off topic and doesn’t add anything to the discussion, however.
It literally asks that his argument be dismissed because of his his personal conduct; it is textbook ad hominem.
1. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-...
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/30/chinas-louis...
I remain profoundly ashamed that Al Jazeera rather than an American or local news outlet had to break this story.
(Lots of people on H1-B's especially from India want a faster path to get a green card rather than be stuck in limbo for decades..
Rules are meant to be bent. Laws are meant to be broken.
>Laws are meant to be broken.
Those two statements sound a bit conflicting to me. Also, I don’t know how one can call green card marriage fraud “bending the rules” or a “workaround”. It is literally lying to USCIS in order to obtain a green card under false pretenses.
For example USCIS apparently puts some people through interviews where they ask for intimate personal details of the spouse, like what side of the bed they sleep on or the color of the toothbrush they use. This implies a particular definition of marriage — one where you sleep on the same bed and use the same bathroom. Yet I know plenty of happily married folks who have generally separate lives, including having separate intimate relationships. That doesn't make their marriages any less valid!
They aren’t looking for a “particular definition of marriage.” They are looking for inconsistencies and divergences between what each partner says, thus trying to catch them lying. I heavily doubt they will call your marriage fraudulent just because you and your partner don’t share the same bed.
I guess every system begins with good intentions and finally ends up getting unfriendly as people abuse it.
One can argue that it is the system creators' job to make the system fair and difficult to game, but that is a topic for another time...
end rant :(
Why?
That was Milton Friedman's view.
No human is illegal.
If it's legal in your jurisdiction to be held in holding for going 3 MPH over the speed limit then the only just course of action is to either repeal the law or start throwing everyone into holding for that infraction - ideally that goes on until public will leads to the law being repealed. If that law is only occasionally enforced then it's enforcement leads to capricious and unjust state of the law.
https://www.goldenvisas.com/citizenship-by-investment-greece
> Because of the need to reside in the country the Greek golden visa program is considered a residency investment program rather than citizenship by investment. However the option for citizenship is there for those committed to living in Greece.
The biggest barriers are:
1. Money/Income 2. Language. 3. Education.
You can't fit in if you don't know the language, or literate. That's what makes Student visas so valuable, because it can give an anchor to an family to move abroad.
Education, you can't survive abroad w/o income and this is usually hand in hand w/ a degree.
Money, well, money is good everywhere.
I would invite you to visit Richmond BC which happens to be majority Asian (on top of my head 72% +) and majority of that Chinese. A Chinese national moving to Richmond would not struggle too much without English language.
Why did you mention literature at all?
Not OP, but being literate has a very tangential relationship to literature, so I think you might have just misunderstood what he meant by that word.
Lastly, if you're going for residency or citizenship then you'll need solid english or french comprehension, and you'll likely be going through the downtown vancouver citizenship office.
It’s crazy. We actually hated the public schools and moved away.
I fail to see the problem.
"Essentially adopt"? That's kind of like "essentially pregnant", no?
Assuming they weren't legally adopting the kids, it sounds like you're describing an exchange program, which is a time-honored tradition around the world.
Investing 500k costs very little. You'll likely make more money than if you bought Chinese real estate. Even if you have to borrow 500k its only going to cost you ~10-20k a year.
But, hold up, isn't this a move in the right direction? Sure, it's all 'rich' people that can do this right now, but having people from lots of different countries moving about, having 'table stakes' in many countries, and generally putting cash into these places, that seems to be a 'good' thing to me. Sure, yeah, it could be a lot better for even us proles. But the world being such a place where these 'schemes' can happen at all seems like it's a good thing.
> Manhattan’s new luxury mega-project was partially bankrolled by an investor visa program called EB-5, which was meant to help poverty-stricken areas
1. Money laundering i.e. How can Chinese government officials embezzle tax money and keep it? Buy real estate overseas and have your family live in them.
2. Tax evasion. Buy real estate overseas and have your family live in them.
The education angle makes sense, but imo it's not the main reason.
As in, money laundering requires that the source of money have an illicit origin - not merely the observation thats its being moved around - but if the origin is successfully completely unknown, or if the origin is determined illicit by the Chinese government, then neither of those really satisfy the criteria for vilifying the current recipient
Anyone who wants to know where this magic foreign money is coming from. Personally, I'm not judging anyone. At the same time I don't like living in ignorance.
Using that info to use public resources on curbing money flows is something I would be against, given that its a fools errand
Anyone smart, Chinese, and with resources is looking for a way to not be subject to Chinese legal/government jurisdiction, and if you were in China, you'd be doing the same.
You missed the point that the people fleeing is already stealing tax and are likely the bad parts of the system themselves. They are fleeing from others like them and the justice, to begin with. If the system will collapse or not, i doubt that cross their mind.