AUSTRALIAN MODEL TRAPPED IN AMERICA’S BROKEN BILLION-DOLLAR VISA SYSTEM

Seven-Year Green Card Limbo Sparks Questions Over Failing US Investor Program

Australian model Natalie Sady is trapped in limbo because of the US’s controversial EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.

An Australian model who invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the US economy under a government-backed immigration scheme says she is now trapped in a years-long bureaucratic nightmare that threatens to destroy her future in America - despite Congress passing laws specifically designed to protect investors like her.

The case highlights an increasingly controversial EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program - a multi-billion-dollar visa pathway originally created by the US Congress in 1990 to attract wealthy and skilled foreign investors into the American economy in exchange for permanent residency.

Under the program, applicants invest substantial sums into approved development projects designed to create American jobs.

But critics now say the system has become plagued by delays, collapsing projects, bureaucratic dysfunction and shifting immigration policies that are leaving legitimate investors stranded in legal limbo for years.

Central to the story is well-known Australian model Natalie Sady who applied for her green card in 2019, believing, based on government expectations at the time, that her application would likely be adjudicated within 6 to 18 months.

Instead, seven years later, Sady remains stuck in an unresolved immigration battle after the Portland, Oregon-based project she invested in collapsed during the chaos of COVID and the city’s prolonged civil unrest following the Black Lives Matter protests.

The development project reportedly struggled to secure funding amid the economic devastation of the pandemic and months of intense unrest in Portland, which saw more than 100 consecutive days of protests and widespread disruption to the city’s economy.

As the project deteriorated, dozens of international investors were left exposed.

In 2022, Congress voted to extend the EB-5 program and introduced significant reforms under the Reform and Integrity Act (RIA), including a “good faith investor” provision designed specifically to protect investors whose projects failed through no fault of their own.

The reforms were intended to allow affected investors to transfer or “reassociate” into new approved projects while preserving their eligibility for permanent residency.

According to Sady and her attorney, Dr. Dima Malhas, that protection never materialised.

They allege the US Government failed to properly terminate the failed Portland project despite repeated requests from the project itself - including multiple formal requests for termination and failures to pay mandatory government fees, which they say should have automatically triggered termination proceedings.

Instead, investors suddenly received denials of their green card applications before formal termination notices were ever issued to them.

Two weeks later, the government officially terminated the project - but allegedly failed to issue the required termination letters to investors, preventing them from activating the reassociation protections Congress had written into law.

The result, Sady’s attorney argues, is that legitimate investors who complied with every requirement are now facing deportation, financial ruin, or abandoning their American futures altogether.

“These are not criminals or fraudulent applicants,” Malhas said.

“These are doctors, businesspeople, entrepreneurs and professionals who have been extensively vetted, whose money was legally earned, and who invested in America in good faith believing the system would honour its own laws.”

Sady’s attorney, Dr. Dima Malhas, Esq., who worked alongside the legal team involved in advising on the implementation of the original Regional Center framework decades ago, says the system has fundamentally broken down. There are growing concerns among legal practitioners and prospective immigrant investors regarding the efficiency and integrity of the EB-5 Program as a pathway to U.S. residency through job creation.

In a controversial position likely to spark debate inside immigration and investment circles, Dr. Malhas now believes the EB-5 program may need to be scrapped entirely unless major structural reforms are implemented.

“What started as a visionary program to attract investment and talent into the United States has, over time, become deeply dysfunctional,” she argues.

Dr. Malhas says many investors have spent years living in uncertainty, unable to fully build lives, businesses or families while waiting for immigration outcomes that were never meant to take nearly a decade.

She also argues that the current immigration crackdown environment has unintentionally swept legitimate investors into broader political efforts to tighten border and immigration controls.

“President Trump inherited an immigration system in chaos,” Dr. Malhas said.

“But in trying to clean up the mess, innocent investors who followed the rules are now getting caught in the crossfire.”

The case comes as uncertainty grows over the future of the EB-5 program itself.

While Congress has authorised the EB-5 program through the end of fiscal year 2027, new applications are reportedly expected to stop in September 2026 unless lawmakers move again to extend the program.

For many investors already trapped inside the system, time is rapidly running out.

According to Sady, the emotional toll has been immense.

“You put your life on hold believing you’re building a future,” she said.

“Seven years later, you realise the system itself may be the very thing destroying it.”