Miami
EB-5, E-2, and the US Investor Visa Landscape — Honest Trade-offs for Foreign Buyers
There is no equivalent of Spain's Golden Visa in the United States. There are, however, several investor-linked visas. Each comes with serious trade-offs.
Spain's Golden Visa (now ended for new property-only applications) gave a generation of foreign buyers a clean answer: buy €500k of property, get a residency. The United States has never had that equivalent. Buying real estate in Miami does not give the buyer any immigration status. There are, however, several investor-linked visa pathways — and they are frequently misunderstood.
The options
- EB-5 — investment of $800,000 to $1,050,000 in a job-creating commercial enterprise in a targeted employment area, leading to permanent residency (green card). Long processing times, high standards of source-of-funds documentation.
- E-2 Treaty Investor — for nationals of treaty countries (most of Europe, Japan, but not China or India), a substantial investment in a US business in which the investor is actively engaged. Non-immigrant but renewable indefinitely.
- L-1 / O-1 / EB-1 — work and extraordinary ability visas, sometimes used in parallel.
What real estate alone does not buy
Passive ownership of a Miami residence — even a $20M one — gives the foreign owner no immigration status. EB-5 requires an active, job-creating commercial enterprise; passive residential real estate does not qualify, though certain EB-5 regional center investments are real-estate-adjacent.
About the author
Shibui Research is the editorial desk of Shibui Collective, covering private real estate for cross-border family capital. Our team has structured and operated more than $1.2B of value-add and core-plus real estate across Europe, the Americas, and Asia over the past fifteen years.