Posted on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - 02:51 pm:

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WEDNESDAY, May 28, 2008, 1:07 p.m.
By John Schmid

Fund launched to draw Chinese investment
Milwaukee entrepreneur Robert Kraft on Wednesday formally launched a business that's meant to attract Chinese investment to southeast Wisconsin under a federal program that grants U.S. residency rights to qualified foreigners who invest within the metro area.

Kraft said he cleared his final legal and bureaucratic hurdles this week to launch the FirstPathway Citizenship Fund, a private-equity fund that will allow qualified investors to receive a Green Card if they invest at least $1 million in the fund, which in turn will plow the funds into projects inside the seven-county immigration-investment zone.

Kraft hailed the fund as a way to build the Chinese community in Milwaukee, making the city more international and linking it more closely to the movement of people and capital around the world. If Milwaukee fails to connect with the Asian economy, "the region will be left behind," Kraft said.

"This is a great tool for economic development," said Peter Beitzel, vice president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. Beitzel spoke at the Wednesday announcement.

The program is administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and deals with a category of visa called the EB-5. While many classes of U.S. visas are oversubscribed - leaving U.S. employers and universities chafing at the inability to recruit workers from abroad - Washington seldom reaches its cap of EB-5 visas.

The U.S. has 17 active EB-5 zones but Milwaukee's is the only one in the American Midwest that is meant for urban and industrial investment; the closest are in Iowa and South Dakota, and both of those are meant for rural and agricultural investment.

"There's nothing like it in Chicago or Minneapolis or Detroit," Beitzel said.

With their investment, each investor must create at least 10 jobs. Investors who meet U.S. qualifications can apply from almost anywhere in the world but Kraft's fund will focus on the Chinese. With partners in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, he set up offices to seek investors and build a $200 million fund, which in turn will invest the funds into projects in the Milwaukee region.

The program allows for investors to qualify with $500,000 but that limits their investment into rural or distressed urban areas. Kraft said he wanted the latitude to invest in projects across the area.

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