Sitting around the long, wooden kitchen table in their farmhouse on a Sunday afternoon, Rene and Judith Dekker were tired-eyed from rising before dawn to tend to their 1,200 dairy cows.

Their two older kids were packing up for the drive back to college — Bart wanted to know whether mom had ironed his dress shirt, while Susanne gently scooped her live goldfish into a plastic bag. Mathias, 16, had algebra homework and Benny the chocolate Lab bounced around outside.

They looked like any other family here in rural Michigan, but they are Dutch citizens. And they are faces of a fast-growing U.S. visa program, in which foreigners can gain permanent residence by investing $500,000 in a U.S. project that creates at least 10 jobs.