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The program is put in an extremely weird and non-helpful administrative place for the stimulation of worldwide financial investment in the United States. Second, its range is all incorrect. We are handing out excessive for also tiny of an investment. Additionally, elevating financial backing half a million dollars a tranche is, to say the least, ineffective.


The regional centers, with their half-million systems, essentially damaged the a lot more sensible million-dollar part of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them in any way, as they carry out in Australia, need to be about creating organization entities, not easy investments. It ought to have to do with creating genuine work, not clarify computations about the indirect production of work, which is currently component of the legislation.


Maybe that is among the reasons that it has actually failed time after time to reach the legal goal of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Center Program is inherently awkward, and the program is too full of middlemen, both public and personal. The program has more than its share of detractions, which I will certainly obtain right into later on if anybody is interested.


This is an agency that likes to state yes to applicants, but as the table in my testimony reveals, USCIS policemans have a lot more trouble with EB-5 applications than others. I think that is something that no one has actually spoken about a lot. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high prices of interior denials in this program and completely reason

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Seventh, in this program visas go to people who can not get them any kind of other method and to individuals whose scheduled investment is actually less, according to the Federal Get, than the typical mean web well worth of all American families in 2007. Allow me increase on one of my observations.


My price quote based upon the financiers' eco-friendly card applications filed 2 years after the first investment-- these are the strong ones that continue to be and are accepted. This is 2009-- was that they had about $191 million validated-- that is my price quote. USCIS does not give the kind of data that we can use on this.


So for every single $100 of raised foreign financial investment that year, the EB program contributed one penny. Under a a lot more wobbly analytical base, the first applications of would-be immigrant capitalists, USCIS is informing journalists that the degree of investment in the just-concluded year was regarding $1.2 billion. Let us accept that.

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Thanks for paying attention to me. I eagerly anticipate your comments and inquiries. [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 company's immigration technique team.




Divine served as Principal Counsel of the USA Citizenship and Migration Services from July 2004 till November 2006, the year in which he was Acting Supervisor, and after that Acting Deputy Supervisor. He has actually functioned thoroughly with the EB-5 program in private technique. He was chosen, as I recognize, vice head of state of the Association to Purchase United States, the nationwide market association of regional facilities.


DECLARATION OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, ATTORNEY, BAKER, blog here DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL, AND BERKOWITZ, P.C., CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, AND VICE PRESIDENT, INVEST IN THE USA (IIUSA) Mr. Divine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Legislator Grassley, and others.


At the majority of, if all 10,000 ports were utilized, it would be 1 percent of the immigration every year to the United States. It is not near that yet, but it is expanding and obtaining towards that. Especially as USCIS, the company that looks after the program, has actually been making the policies more clear and the processes a lot more sensible and clear for the individuals that are arranging financial investments and for the capitalists who are investing, even more individuals have actually agreed and able to put effort and money into the procedure to locate excellent projects and develop them, and afterwards much more financiers have actually agreed to spend their money and take the danger and use the cash to develop the jobs that is the factor of the program.

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These jobs do not linger permanently, and USCIS recognizes that and are attempting to speed the program, speed the procedure - EB5 Regional try this Center Program. That does not indicate that they are relaxing their examination, and, as a matter of fact, they are ready to deny applications that are not qualifying. And they do so, as was stated


The local facility part of the program is not. It belongs to an appropriations costs that was passed in 1992, and ever since that program has been prolonged five times for 19 years. It is time for it to be irreversible, and it requires to be done currently and not nearer to the date of expiry in September.


The process takes a good while to work up a task and after that to get the financiers authorized. And they do not desire their cash streaming through up until they have actually been authorized. And the specter of the expiration of this Regional Facility Program in September is already discouraging the advancement of tasks.

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I would certainly like to clarify that the Regional Center Program is not the same as the half-million-dollar point. The idea of half a million or a million is a function of the regular EB-5 law that becomes part of the code. It simply is a fact that a lot of the local centers that are pooling financial investments have set those in areas of high unemployment or in country locations official source where half- million-dollar investments are allowed, which makes good sense.