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The program is put in a really odd and non-helpful administrative area for the stimulation of worldwide financial investment in the United States. We are providing away also much for also small of a financial investment.


The regional facilities, with their half-million systems, essentially undercut the extra reasonable million-dollar part of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them whatsoever, as they do in Australia, ought to be about developing organization entities, not easy investments. It should be about creating actual work, not elaborate calculations concerning the indirect development of jobs, which is now part of the legislation.


Probably that is among the reasons why it has actually failed year after year to get to the legislative goal of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Facility Program is inherently awkward, and the program is too filled with intermediaries, both public and private. The program has greater than its share of scandals, which I will enter later on if anyone is interested.


This is an agency that likes to say yes to applicants, however as the table in my testimony reveals, USCIS policemans have much a lot more trouble with EB-5 applications than others. I assume that is something that nobody has actually really spoken about much. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high rates of interior denials in this program and forever reason

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Seventh, in this program visas most likely to people who can not obtain them otherwise and to people whose planned financial investment is actually less, according to the Federal Book, than the ordinary mean total assets of all American family members in 2007. Allow me expand on among my monitorings.


My quote based upon the investors' permit applications submitted 2 years after the first investment-- these are the solid ones that remain and are accepted. This is 2009-- was that they had regarding $191 million confirmed-- that is my price quote. USCIS does not offer the type of information that we can use on this.


So for each $100 of raised foreign investment that year, the EB program added one penny. Under a a lot more shaky analytical base, the first applications of prospective immigrant capitalists, USCIS is telling journalists that the level of financial investment in the just-concluded year was about $1.2 billion. Let us approve that.

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Thanks for listening to me. I eagerly anticipate your remarks and inquiries. [The ready declaration of David North appears as a submission for the document.] 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 practice team.




Divine served as Chief Guidance of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services from July 2004 until November 2006, the year in which he was Performing Supervisor, and click for info afterwards Performing Replacement Supervisor. He has worked extensively with the EB-5 program in personal method. He was elected, as I comprehend, vice president of the Association to Invest in USA, the nationwide sector association of regional centers.


DECLARATION OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, LAWYER, BAKER, DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL, AND BERKOWITZ, P.C., check this CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, AND VICE HEAD OF STATE, INVEST IN THE USA (IIUSA) Mr. Divine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Legislator Grassley, and others.


At most, if all 10,000 slots were utilized, it would be 1 percent of the immigration yearly to the United States. It is not near that yet, however it is growing and getting towards that. Specifically as USCIS, the company that looks after the program, has been making the guidelines clearer and the processes more sensible and clear for individuals who are arranging investments and for the investors that are investing, even more people have actually been ready and able to put initiative and money right into the process to locate great projects and develop them, and after that a lot more investors have actually been ready to spend their money and take the threat and use the cash to produce the tasks that is the point of the program.

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These jobs do not linger permanently, and USCIS recognizes that and are trying to speed up the program, speed up the process - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not indicate that they are unwinding their examination, and, in reality, they prepare to refute applications that are not qualifying. And they do so, as was mentioned


The local description facility component of the program is not. It becomes part of an appropriations expense that was enacted in 1992, and ever since that program has actually been expanded five times for 19 years. It is time for it to be permanent, and it requires to be done currently and not nearer to the date of expiration in September.


The process takes an excellent while to develop a task and after that to obtain the financiers approved. And they do not want their money streaming with until they have been authorized. And the specter of the expiry of this Regional Center Program in September is already dissuading the development of tasks.

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I want to make clear that the Regional Center Program is not the very same as the half-million-dollar thing. The concept of half a million or a million is a function of the normal EB-5 legislation that belongs to the code. It just is a fact that a lot of the regional facilities that are pooling financial investments have set those in areas of high unemployment or in country areas where half- million-dollar investments are permitted, and that makes good sense.