Australian model Natalie Sady poured her heart, soul and hundreds of thousands of dollars into chasing the American dream. 

Now, after more than eight years living in the United States, the former reality TV star says Joe Biden's immigration disaster and Donald Trump's subsequent crackdown on migrants is threatening to rip it all away.

'I'm terrified,' Sady told Daily Mail from her home in the US.

'I've been living in the US for 8.5 years, and this is how my home treats me? It's incredibly scary after all I've invested financially, socially and emotionally to think that I could be forced to leave due to bad bureaucracy.' 

Sady, a model who shot to fame on The Bachelor Australia, invested big bucks in the US EB-5 visa program back in 2019 – a US government scheme meant to fast-track wealthy foreigners who pump money into American projects and create jobs.

But instead of a smooth path to her green card, she's been trapped in years of hell.

Her investment into a hotel development in Portland, Oregon, collapsed amid the double whammy of COVID chaos and the city's violent Black Lives Matter protests that dragged on for months. 

Now, her future in America is hanging by a thread. 

Sady watched in frustration as waves of illegal migrants flooded across the southern border under Biden, reportedly handed housing, phones, and support.

'It's been so frustrating,' she said.

'Illegal migrants were given everything – housing, phones, social security support. Meanwhile, legal migrants like myself are actually contributing through investments and taxes ... and now I'm caught in the crosshairs.'

Sady appeared on The Bachelor Australia way back in 2013 in a bid to win the heart of chiropractor Tim Robards, who was four years her junior.

While she was eliminated in the ninth episode, she remained a popular contestant among fans of the show.

Sady moved to Los Angeles in 2017 and quickly found her feet in a city not short of dreamers, continuing her successful Australian modelling career. 

The emotional toll of her latest predicament has been devastating.

'You put your life on hold believing you're building a future,' Sady said.

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

With the Trump administration cracking down hard to clean up the immigration mess left behind, legitimate investors like Sady fear they're being swept up in the purge.

'The uncertainty reigns over all of us,' she said.

'Because of what has been created, the US now becomes a far less appealing and attractive place to relocate to. The emotional toll it is causing is huge.'  

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

But critics 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.

Sady's American lawyer Dr Dima Malhas said 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 US residency through job creation.

'These are not criminals or fraudulent applicants,' Dr Malhas said.

'These are doctors, business people, 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.'

Once full of hope about starting a new life in America, Sady now faces the heartbreaking possibility of having to abandon everything she's built and return home to Australia. 

'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.'

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

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