New York (CNN Business) The US government just jacked up the price of investing your way to permanent residency. By a lot.

Under rules published Wednesday by the US Department of Homeland Security, the minimum investment amount required to obtain an EB-5 visa will nearly double from $500,000 to $900,000. The real estate industry has warned the change will choke off funds that started gushing in during the Great Recession and haven't stopped since.

The EB-5 program was created in 1990 to encourage investment in economically distressed areas. Foreigners only really started using it in 2008, when turmoil in American capital markets caused real estate developers to scramble for other ways to raise money. It now generates more than $5 billion a year, in exchange for nearly 10,000 green cards — a number that is capped by statute. Chinese applicants take up almost all of the 10,000 spots.

For years, the program had come under fire from legislators who worried it was subject to fraud or who objected in principle to the idea that foreigners could buy US residency. Most US visas are based on family relationships or employer sponsorships, but having an investor visa isn't unique; many countries have them, and compete for new citizens and the wealth that they bring.

The way the EB-5 program works, states get to choose which areas and projects are eligible. As a result, most of the EB-5 investment has flowed to fast-growing urban centers. But some lawmakers wanted to focus the program more tightly on poor rural places. Another criticism is that states made high-end projects eligible for EB-5 investment by including poor neighborhoods in what were effectively EB-5 districts — doing the kind of gerrymandering that happens in electoral politics. One widely reported example is Hudson Yards, the massive redevelopment project in New York City. (CNN's parent company, WarnerMedia, has offices in Hudson Yards.)

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