Immigrant Investor Initiative Progressing

An effort to attract foreign investors to the bio-agriculture industrial park in Wooster is moving ahead.

The Wooster Growth Corp. is finalizing its application to establish an EB-5 regional center, a governmental program that provides 3,000 visas each year for foreigners wishing to invest at least $500,000 in designated areas. The center would attract investors to the BioOhio Research Park being developed at the Ohio Agricultural Research & Development Center in Wooster.

According to a story in the Daily Record by Bryan Schaf:

The basic government criteria for the EB-5 status are that the investment must be in a business, not a passive security such as the stock market; invested funds must be the individual's; the business must have been created after Nov. 29, 1990; or, the investment must substantially change an older business and the amount of investment may be $500,000 in a rural or high unemployment area.

The program was scheduled to expire on Sept. 30, but the U.S. Senate issued a continuing resolution to decide whether or not it would extend it on March 30.

Wooster Growth members Justin Starlin and Andrei Dordea recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with public officials to speak in favor of the program's extension.