Posted on 10/27/2011 5:20:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Have you got $500,000 (£312,000) to spare and hail from anywhere but America? If so, one Charles Schumer of New York wants you to get in touch.
That half a million dollars, according to Schumer, one of New York's two Democratic Senators, could be part of the answer to the country's housing crash. Schumer and Mike Lee, a Republican Senator from Utah, are trying to drum up support for legislation that will entice foreigners to invest 359,000, C$508,000, 78m yen or 3.1m yuan in US residential real estate. And the sweetener: a visa to live here as long as you own the property. Is it starting to look attractive? It might be to those who don't subscribe to the thesis that America's best days are behind it.
Until you read the small print. It has to be a cash purchase, you've got to live in the property for 180 days a year, it's not a staging post on the path to citizenship and the visa won't allow you to work in the US. That, of course, would stymie another central aim of US politicians, as the senator admits. "The bill [proposal] does not limit people from being productive," said Schumer. "It simply prevents them from coming here and taking jobs that would otherwise go to Americans." Schumer wants your money, not you.
But he and Lee have correctly fingered a number of trends. More than five years after US house prices began falling they still are. Prices edged down 0.1pc in August, according to the latest survey by the S&P/Case-Shiller index published this week, and were 3.8pc lower than a year earlier. The efforts by the Federal Reserve to drive down mortgage rates are having little effect.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Most of these houses will be purchased with CASH.
This is not going to help inner city houses that are abandoned. It will help affluent suburbs like Scottsdale, AZ and Darien, CT or selling your $2.2 million condo on the upper East side.
These are the type of immigrants WE WANT. Rich people who pay taxes , go out to restaurants, hire landscapers , put in home theater systems, NEED granite counter tops and SS appliances, hire trash removal, cleaning and maid services , have multiple automoblies , send their kids to MIT and in general DRIVE THE ECONOMY.
They are not the people that fly here when nine months pregnant to have their anchor baby at a hospital in Miami.
But they could buy a house under this program, obey all the requirements, get pregnant, and have the kid her. Then the kid is a citizen, and now the parents have preferential status as far as getting into the US. AAnd they can always sell the house.
Hear, Hear.
Wealthy Asians are responsible for keeping real estate prices high in San Francisco, in addition to the geography.
Were it not for them, real estate prices there would have tanked; like say Portland Oregon.
Get real, America is a sovereign nation, not to sold out to rich foreign effers juts because they can come up with $500,000.
The investment can be a house for $250,000 plus the investment of $250,000 in another piece of real estate.
The visa awarded for this/these investment(s) is for three years. What happens after three years? The door has been opened.
There is always a way to get around certain restrictions, and I am thing "frontmen."
Before we moved, we lived on the East Coast in a rather high end (300K+) housing development. One house was bought by a hispanic family who over time took in 3 or 4 additional families, so that there was multiple families in that 4000 sq ft home. Cars parked up and down the street, kids everywhere.
America is a nation of immigrants. If they can buy a $500K house and contribute to society, let them in. That is what America has been built on for the last 300 years.
My great grandparents came here in 1885 and bought a dairy farm outside of Buffalo. What is the difference ?
Obviously, you still need to do backround checks on these people. We do not need any more felons(ie Tony Montana in Scarface).
Please, please, please make it stop.
Just let housing and housing backed securities find their market clearing level.
I don't care who you tax.
I don't care what programs you cut, and how much.
I don't care what programs you raise, and how much.
I don't care if Michelle Obama takes away my Magic Hat #9.
I don't care if Justin Bieber is revealed to be Donald Trump's love child with Lucianne Goldberg.
I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE.
FAHCRYINOUTLOUD, JUST LET HOUSING AND HOUSING BACKED ASSETS FIND THEIR MARKET CLEARING LEVEL!!!
Canada did this about a decade ago, and this is what happened.
Poor families in China, India and Pakistan got all their clansmen together to get $500,000 together. They paid exhorbitant prices for cheaper houses, which put regular Canadians out of the market. After the new immigrants got their visas, they were able to get family reunion visas for the others in their clans, eventually bringing in all those poor relatives.
Canada eventually altered this, limiting it to business investors or those willing to buy Canadian bonds, and limits the visa to the businessman and family only and put other restrictions on the visa.
No it isn't. I am a native American....I am not an immigrant and neither are you. My parents were not immigrants either
That is no kidding. Surrey BC is Punjab West and has the
only South Asian gangs I’ve ever heard of.
Do not do this!
Is this deal open to ILLEGAL ALIENS? I bet it is!
The U.S.A. Home of the Sell Outs. This isn’t a nation anymore; it’s a supermarket.
Another really bad idea coming from the treason lobby.
“Before we moved, we lived on the East Coast in a rather high end (300K+) housing development. One house was bought by a hispanic family who over time took in 3 or 4 additional families, so that there was multiple families in that 4000 sq ft home. Cars parked up and down the street, kids everywhere.”
Sounds just like here in California. Be sure to thank the idiot politicians who enabled this.
‘Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande’- Dubya
“That is what America has been built on for the last 300 years.”
Sounds like the public school history books have really gone to the dogs.
When my own ancestors ventured here they were colonials, not immigrants. The locals were a variety of often hostile Indian tribes and not a welcome wagon selling citizenship.
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