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The program is positioned in a very odd and non-helpful administrative area for the stimulation of international investment in the United States. We are providing away as well much for also tiny of a financial investment.


The local facilities, with their half-million schemes, essentially damaged the much more sensible million-dollar component of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them whatsoever, as they do in Australia, must be regarding producing business entities, not easy investments. It needs to be regarding creating actual tasks, not elaborate estimations about the indirect production of jobs, which is currently part of the regulation.


Possibly that is just one of the reasons it has stopped working time after time to get to the legislative objective of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Center Program is naturally clumsy, and the program is as well loaded with middlemen, both public and exclusive. The program has greater than its share of rumors, which I will enter into later if anyone is interested.


This is an agency that loves to say yes to candidates, however as the table in my testimony shows, USCIS police officers have much a lot more trouble with EB-5 applications than others. I believe that is something that no one has actually really discussed a lot. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high rates of interior rejections in this program and permanently reason

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Seventh, in this program visas most likely to individuals who might not obtain them any type of various other method and to individuals whose scheduled investment is actually much less, according to the Federal Get, than the ordinary mean net worth of all American households in 2007. Let me broaden on one of my observations.


My estimate based on the capitalists' environment-friendly card applications submitted 2 years after the initial investment-- these are the solid ones that remain and are approved. This is 2009-- was that they had concerning $191 million validated-- that is my price quote. USCIS does not give the type of data that we can utilize on this.


For every $100 of raised international financial investment that year, the EB program added one cent. Under a far more unsteady analytical base, the first applications of would-be immigrant capitalists, USCIS is informing journalists that the level of financial 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 eagerly anticipate your remarks and questions. [The prepared declaration of David North shows up as an entry 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 worked as Chief Counsel of the USA Citizenship and Migration Solutions from July 2004 until November 2006, the year in which he was Performing Supervisor, and then Acting Replacement Supervisor. He has functioned thoroughly with the EB-5 program secretive practice. He was chosen, as I comprehend, vice head of state of the Association to Purchase United States, the national industry association of regional facilities.


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


At most, if all 10,000 ports were made use of, it would certainly be 1 percent of the immigration each year to the United States. It is not near that yet, yet it is expanding and obtaining toward that. Especially as USCIS, the agency that looks after the program, has been making the policies more clear and the processes a lot more rational and clear for individuals who are arranging investments and for the financiers that are investing, more individuals have actually been ready and able to put effort and cash right into the process to discover excellent projects and develop them, and after that extra investors have wanted to spend their money and take the danger and utilize the cash to develop the jobs that is the point of the program.

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These projects do not linger forever, and USCIS comprehends that and are attempting to speed the program, speed the procedure - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not mean that they are relaxing their scrutiny, and, actually, they prepare to refute applications that are not certifying. And they do so, as was stated


The local center component of the program is not. It is part of an appropriations costs that was passed in 1992, and because then that program has been prolonged 5 times for 19 years. It is time for it to be long-term, and it needs to be done more info now and not nearer to the day of expiration in September.


The procedure takes a good while to function up a project and after that to obtain the financiers approved. And they do not want their money streaming with up until they have been authorized. And the specter of the expiry of this Regional Facility Program in September is currently discouraging the advancement of projects.

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I want to make clear that the Regional Center Program is not the like the half-million-dollar thing. The idea of half a million or a million is a function of the regular EB-5 legislation that is part of the code. It just is a reality that most of the local facilities that are pooling financial investments have actually established those in areas of high joblessness or in backwoods where fifty percent- million-dollar financial investments are permitted, and that makes sense.