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The program is put in an extremely strange and non-helpful governmental place for the stimulation of worldwide investment in the United States. We are providing away too much for also little of a financial investment.


The local centers, with their half-million systems, basically damaged the a lot more reasonable million-dollar component of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them whatsoever, as they carry out in Australia, need to be concerning creating company entities, not easy financial investments. It ought to have to do with producing actual tasks, not elaborate calculations concerning the indirect production of jobs, which is now component of the legislation.


Perhaps that is one of the reasons it has actually stopped working time after time to reach the legislative objective of 10,000 investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Facility Program is naturally clumsy, and the program is also full of middlemen, both public and personal. The program has more than its share of scandals, which I will enter into later on if anyone is interested.


This is an agency that likes to claim yes to candidates, yet as the table in my statement reveals, USCIS policemans have much more difficulty with EB-5 applications than others. I think that is something that no one has really spoken about much. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high rates of interior denials in this program and forever factor

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Seventh, in this program visas most likely to individuals that can not get them any other means and to people whose scheduled investment is in fact much less, according to the Federal Get, than the typical mean total assets of all American households in 2007. Allow me broaden on one of my monitorings.


My estimate based upon the investors' copyright applications submitted 2 years after the very first financial investment-- these are the strong ones that remain and are authorized. This is 2009-- was that they had about $191 million confirmed-- that is my quote. USCIS does not offer the kind of data that we might use on this.


So for every $100 of increased international financial investment that year, the EB program added one cent. Under a much a lot more unsteady analytical base, the preliminary applications of prospective immigrant investors, USCIS is telling journalists that the degree of financial investment in the just-concluded year was concerning $1.2 billion. Let us accept that.

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Thank you for listening to me. I expect your remarks and inquiries. [The ready declaration of David North appears as a submission for the record.] Chairman Leahy. Thank you. Our following witness is Robert Divine. He is an investor of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, and Berkowitz. He is the head of the company's immigration practice group.




Divine worked as Principal Advice of the USA Citizenship and Immigration Providers from July 2004 up until November 2006, the year in which he was Acting Supervisor, and afterwards Acting click here Deputy Director. He has functioned extensively with the EB-5 program secretive practice. He was chosen, as I comprehend, vice head of state of the Organization to Invest in United States, the national market organization of regional.


Divine, we are pleased to have you below. Please go ahead, sir. STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, LAWYER, BAKER, DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL, AND BERKOWITZ, P.C., CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, AND VICE PRESIDENT, INVEST IN THE United States (IIUSA) Mr. Divine. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, Senator Grassley, and others. Thank you for having me.


At the majority of, if all 10,000 slots were used, it would be 1 percent of the immigration every year to the United States. It is not near that yet, however it is growing and getting towards that. Particularly as USCIS, the firm that supervises the program, has been making the policies clearer and the processes a lot more sensible and clear for individuals who are organizing financial investments and for the investors who are investing, more individuals have actually wanted and able to put effort and money into the procedure to find great jobs and develop them, and after that more financiers have actually been ready to spend their money and take the danger and make use of the money to create the work that is the factor of the program.

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These jobs do not linger permanently, and USCIS comprehends that and are attempting to speed up the program, speed up the process - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not suggest that they are unwinding their analysis, and, in fact, they are prepared to refute applications that are not certifying. And they do so, as was stated


The local center component of the program is not. It belongs to an appropriations expense that was enacted in 1992, and ever since that program has been expanded five times for 19 years. It is time for it to be long-term, and it requires to be done now and not nearer to the day of expiration in September.


The procedure takes a great while to function up a project and after that to get the capitalists approved. And they do not want their cash streaming through until they have actually been approved. And the specter of the expiry of this Regional Center Program in September is currently inhibiting the growth of tasks.

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I would love to make clear that the Regional Center Program is not the same as the half-million-dollar point. The concept of half a million or a million is a feature of the regular EB-5 law that becomes part of the code. It simply is a fact that a lot of the regional centers that are pooling investments have established those in places of high unemployment or in country areas where half- million-dollar investments are enabled, and that makes good sense.