Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 135 posts

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#71

Post by akavi »

vkou wrote: post #67
TomMarius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not foreign capital but that someone thought that limiting housing construction would be a good idea

Vancouver, SF, Seattle are all going through unprecedented construction booms. There are more active cranes in Seattle at the moment then there are anywhere in North America. 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…

Except everything I can find says that Seattle real estate prices are in fact falling.

[0] https://komonews.com/news/local/home-prices-dropping-in-the-...

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-ar...

[2] https://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Seattle-Washington/

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#72

Post by gcbw2 »

chance_state wrote: post #60
damnyou wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another frame: your acquaintances were frustrated at how hard it is to immigrate and figured out a workaround. I strongly believe in freedom of movement so any legal or extra-legal means to do so are all right in my book. Rules are meant to be bent. Laws are meant to be broken.

>I strongly believe in freedom of movement [...] Why?

Why not?

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#73

Post by filoleg »

damnyou wrote: post #54
filoleg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I strongly believe in freedom of movement so any legal or extra-legal means to do so are all right in my book. >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.

If they are legally married then how is it fraud? The entire idea of marriage fraud is bogus — it's just another invention used to justify state violence against a disfavored group. Marriages exist in all shapes and forms, many more than the state can think of. 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 sl…

>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.

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.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#74

Post by gcbw2 »

jseliger wrote: post #50
chaostheory wrote: post #22

The reasons for this are obvious: 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.

You're missing the most obvious reason that's far more important: Anyone smart and Chinese knows that there's a very decent chance that the system collapses and/or the government steals all your money and possibly your life. In the US and Canada, it's extremely uncommon for the government to steal a rich person's money and even life, and it virtually never happens without a public trial. Anyone smart, Chinese, and wi…

You think in terms of theoretical society that is either On or Off. No place is like that.

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.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#75

Post by addicted »

dev_dull wrote: post #69

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think the $500k investment is a great idea. Why is it in our interest for that money to be invested elsewhere? 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.

While I agree with most of what you say, I'm struggling to see how rule breakers get rewarded.

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.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#76

Post by munk-a »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #4

> But Canada closed its federal programme in 2014 (some provincial schemes, such as Quebec’s, continue). 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 stoppin…

I think this is confusion of two pretty distinct things, I'm fine with affluence being a metric in the immigration process (especially if, as with Canada, the government directly profits from the temporary use of that money) - the issue in Vancouver more lies in the usage of vacant properties to park money from overseas, since cities suffer from having artificially lowered vacancies it is pretty proper that a vacancy tax is leveraged on these properties to recoup the lost value - the issue here is mostly that the prior Premier worked to block such a tax repeatedly, we now have the tax in place though it's implementation is still having some growing pains.

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.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#77

Post by NKosmatos »

moftz wrote: post #62
coolspot wrote: post #17

It is large industry. More than one of my acquaintances got their green card and then citizenship by paying $20-$30k for fake marriage to a US citizen.

Greece has a program where you invest 250k euros (real estate is a common one) and you get a residency permit good for 5 years and can be renewed as long as you still own that real estate. After 5 years you can apply for a permanent residency, five years of that you can apply for citizenship. Now, Greece isn't the best country but even as a resident you and your family get total access to the rest of the EU.

I agree, Greece might not be one of the best countries but a Greek passport is worth more, compared to passports from other countries [0]. Investing 250k on a house gives you access to an EU country with a “powerful” passport and you get to keep a nice Mediterranean house. Now if only I could find an “investor” to buy the summer house I’m selling :-) (oh boy, I’m really going to be downvoted for this shameless plug)

[0] https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#78

Post by jlawson »

roywiggins wrote: post #70
oh_sigh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with that? It's not like that is a secret program that only Kusher has access to. Anyone (with the money) can invest $500k and come live in the US.

"invoking Kushner's status as a senior White House aide to attract investors" sure makes it look like they're trying to use Jared Kushner's position as a paid White House aide to gain a competitive advantage. When you have two possible EB-5 investment opportunities, and one advertises its a direct line to a senior White House official, which one do you choose? How long would Google keep around a senior executive if h…

I want to know what that "invoking" sentence actually means. What exactly did Kushner actually say? Either he did something possibly illegal, or the media is attempting to leave the reader believing a damaging lie without actually saying something they can get called out on. We'd need the original quotes to know which. Until then, we can of course each just assume the reality confirms our prior beliefs.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#79

Post by munk-a »

damnyou wrote: post #33
coolspot wrote: post #17

It is large industry. More than one of my acquaintances got their green card and then citizenship by paying $20-$30k for fake marriage to a US citizen.

Another frame: your acquaintances were frustrated at how hard it is to immigrate and figured out a workaround. I strongly believe in freedom of movement so any legal or extra-legal means to do so are all right in my book. Rules are meant to be bent. Laws are meant to be broken.

I strongly believe in freedom of movement - but any time laws are bent or broken they open the door to selective enforcement - and selective enforcement can be undetectably discriminatory. If a law is silly and we all agree it is then we should get rid of that law.

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.

Re: Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

#80

Post by roywiggins »

jlawson wrote: post #78
roywiggins wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"invoking Kushner's status as a senior White House aide to attract investors" sure makes it look like they're trying to use Jared Kushner's position as a paid White House aide to gain a competitive advantage. When you have two possible EB-5 investment opportunities, and one advertises its a direct line to a senior White House official, which one do you choose? How long would Google keep around a senior executive if h…

I want to know what that "invoking" sentence actually means. What exactly did Kushner actually say? Either he did something possibly illegal, or the media is attempting to leave the reader believing a damaging lie without actually saying something they can get called out on. We'd need the original quotes to know which. Until then, we can of course each just assume the reality confirms our prior beliefs.

> Meyer, the sister of Jared Kushner, was speaking at an event in which she was trying to attract wealthy Chinese investors to the 1 Journal Square project.

> 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/...

Post reply on HN