“We have pioneered many EB-5 milestones, but this one gives us particular pride,” CanAm President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Rosenfeld said. “It highlights the sincerity of our goal to protect our investors’ best interest – and our success in doing so.”
The latest fully repaid investment was a $125 million loan through the CanAm Los Angeles Regional Center. The cash infusion was used to fund film and television productions in a targeted employment area located in Los Angeles County. A significant amount of California-based productions relocates to other states, or to Canada, where there are greater finance incentives, including film tax credits that California historically has not offered.
Operating as a financing incentive to keep these “runaway productions” in Los Angeles and to help create jobs in the United States, the EB-5 loan did indeed create and preserve important film production jobs in the region.
Originally formed to target investment projects in the motion picture and television industry, the Los Angeles Film Regional Center was approved by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in 2008. In an effort to broaden the scope of eligible projects for the EB-5 program in the Los Angeles area, an amendment was approved by the USCIS in 2009 to expand the target industries to include transportation, agriculture, alternative energy, and technology, in addition to film.
Overseen by the USCIS, the Immigrant Investor Program, also known as the Regional Center Program or EB-5 Program, provides qualified foreign investors with the opportunity to earn conditional visas in return for investing $500,000 in development projects located in high-unemployment areas that traditional lenders have ignored. Each investment by an EB-5 applicant must create or retain at least 10 permanent full-time jobs for U.S. workers. It is a win-win job-creation program that receives bipartisan support.
A number of EB-5 visas are set aside each year for participants who invest in commercial enterprises associated with regional centers approved of by USCIS, a unit of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
