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Initially, the program is put in an extremely strange and non-helpful administrative area for the excitement of worldwide investment in the United States. Second, its range is all wrong. We are offering away also much for as well tiny of a financial investment. Better, raising equity capital half a million bucks a tranche is, to claim the least, ineffective.


The local facilities, with their half-million plans, essentially undercut the a lot more sensible million-dollar part of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them in all, as they carry out in Australia, need to have to do with creating business entities, not passive investments. It needs to have to do with producing real jobs, not elaborate calculations regarding the indirect creation of jobs, which is currently component of the regulation.


Perhaps that is one of the reasons that it has actually fallen short time after time to reach the legislative objective of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Facility Program is inherently clumsy, and the program is too filled with middlemen, both public and private. The program has greater than its share of scandals, which I will get involved in later on if anybody is interested.


This is an agency that loves to claim yes to candidates, however as the table in my statement shows, USCIS officers have a lot more difficulty with EB-5 applications than others. I think that is something that nobody has actually truly discussed much. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high prices of inner denials in this program and forever factor

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Seventh, in this program visas go to individuals that can not get them otherwise and to people whose organized financial investment is in fact less, according to the Federal Get, than the typical mean web well worth of all American families in 2007. Allow me increase on among my observations.


My quote based on the investors' permit applications filed 2 years after the first investment-- these are the strong ones that continue to be and are authorized. This is 2009-- was that they had regarding $191 million confirmed-- that is my estimate. USCIS does not provide the sort of information that we might utilize on this.


For every $100 of raised international financial investment that year, the EB program added one cent. Under a a lot more shaky analytical base, the initial applications of prospective immigrant capitalists, USCIS is telling reporters that the degree of investment in the just-concluded year had to do with $1.2 billion. Allow us accept that.

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Thank you for paying attention to me. I look forward to your remarks and concerns. [The prepared statement of David North shows up as a submission for the record.] Chairman Leahy. Thank you. Our following witness is Robert Divine. He is a shareholder of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, and Berkowitz. He is the head of the firm's immigration method team.




Divine served as Principal Counsel of the USA Citizenship and Immigration Providers from July 2004 up until November 2006, the year in which he was Performing Supervisor, and after that Performing Deputy Director. He has actually functioned extensively with the EB-5 program in exclusive practice. He was elected, as I comprehend, vice president of the Organization to Purchase U.S.A., the national sector association of local centers.


STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, LAWYER, BAKER, DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL, AND BERKOWITZ, P.C., CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, AND VICE PRESIDENT, INVEST IN THE U.S.A. (IIUSA) Mr. Divine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Grassley, and others.


At most, if all 10,000 slots were made use of, it would be 1 percent of the immigration yearly to the United States. It is not near that yet, however it is expanding and getting toward that. Particularly as USCIS, the firm that manages the program, has been making the guidelines clearer and the procedures much more reasonable and clear for individuals that are organizing investments and for the financiers that are spending, even more individuals have wanted and able to put effort and cash right into the process to discover excellent jobs and create them, and afterwards more financiers have wanted to invest their cash and take the danger and utilize the cash to develop the work that is the point of the program.

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These tasks do not wait around forever, and USCIS understands that and are trying to speed up the program, speed up the procedure - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not mean that they are relaxing their examination, and, in truth, they prepare to reject applications that are not qualifying. And they do so, as was discussed


The local center component of the program is not. It becomes part of an appropriations bill that was passed in 1992, and given that then that program has been extended 5 times for 19 years. It is time for it to be permanent, and it needs to be done currently and not nearer to the day of expiration in September.


The process takes a great while EB5 Regional Center Program to work up a task and afterwards to obtain the capitalists approved. And they do not desire their cash moving via till they have been accepted. And the specter of the expiry of this Regional Facility Program in September is currently discouraging the development of jobs.

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I wish to clear up that the Regional Center Program is not the exact same as the half-million-dollar thing. The concept of half a million or a million is a feature of the regular EB-5 legislation that becomes part of the code. It just is a reality that most of the regional facilities that are merging financial investments have set those instead of high joblessness or in rural areas where fifty percent- million-dollar financial investments are permitted, which makes good sense.