A growing number of people are using business investments to immigrate to the United States.

Washington Post's Internet edition cited data from the State Department as saying that the number of immigrants who received the EB-5 visa tripled over the last year to more than 42-hundred in 2009 and that 70 percent of them were Korean or Chinese.

The EB-5 visa affords foreign nationals the opportunity to invest 500-thousand to one million dollars in a U.S. business in return for a residency visa. After two years, if their investment is proven to have created ten jobs, the immigrants and their spouses and children are granted legal residency.

The paper said in the Sunday article that amid the downturn, cash-strapped enterprises and local governments in the U.S. are scrambling to attract wealthy foreign backers as employment-based immigrants.

The minimum outlay mandated is one million dollars, but immigrants can reduce that to 500-thousand by investing in a regional center or establishing businesses in areas designated as economically disadvantaged. Visas are issued in three to six months of the investment.