How Investment Immigration Can Provide Your Family with Quality Educational Opportunities

As a parent myself, I know that every parent wants quality education for their children. Indeed, many parents dream of immigrating to the United States so that their children can have the opportunity to attend schools in the U.S. While the assessment of the quality of an educational institution is a highly subjective matter, it is clear that different regions of the U.S. offer vastly different educational opportunities, which means that where you choose to live is a very important decision. One of the most beneficial aspects of investment immigration with the EB5 pilot program is that once you have your Green Card, you are free to reside wherever you wish, giving you and your family the chance to take advantage of the schools of your choice. In this article, I will provide you with an overview of the educational choices available to you, and illustrate how the freedom that the EB5 pilot program provides is extremely valuable, not only for the opportunities it can provide to your children, but also in terms of the money it can save you.

All children in the United States are entitled to a free public education, including a primary and secondary education. Public education typically starts with kindergarten, at age five, but many children in the U.S. attend "preschool" before this, at tuition-based schools. Some states have recently begun to introduce limited programs to provide public preschool. Secondary education usually continues up to grade twelve, or about age eighteen. If your child has already begun school in a foreign country, the school can help you decide the best grade placement for your child. Each school year begins in August or September, and runs until May or June, but there are several breaks throughout the year, which could provide a good time for your child to enroll in the new school.

You should also be aware that parents are required to provide this basic education to their children. If you choose not to send your child to public school, there are private schools available, which offer both benefits and drawbacks compared to public school. While private schools have high tuition costs, which you are entirely responsible for, many parents choose private schools because they offer a particular academic or religious focus. Another option is homeschooling, but there are differing regulations for homeschooling in different states, to which you will be required to adhere.

Once a student has completed this basic education, he or she can choose to enter the job market or continue with further education at a college or university. At this point, education is not free-there are tuition and fee costs at both public and private schools. However, residency in a particular state makes attending the public school much less expensive. This makes the freedom that immigration investment provides-to move wherever you wish in the United States-even more valuable. For example, should your child choose to attend one of the prestigious University of California schools, or another of the many colleges in the state, establishing residency in California could save you thousands of dollars.

Under the original EB5 program, immigrant investors were required to be active managers of the businesses they invested in, which meant that often, they were required to live in economically depressed or rural areas, far from where they had originally imagined themselves living in the U.S. Through the new pilot program, some regional centers are able to offer investors limited partnership, which fulfills the active management requirement, but does not require that investors live nearby the regional center. This new arrangement offers quite a few benefits, but to me, the most valuable is the freedom to choose a location that can offer your child the best education available.