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First, the program is put in a really odd and non-helpful administrative area for the excitement of worldwide financial investment in the USA. Second, its scale is all incorrect. We are offering away way too much for as well small of an investment. Better, elevating financial backing half a million dollars a tranche is, to state the least, ineffective.


The local centers, with their half-million systems, essentially undercut the extra practical million-dollar part of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them in all, as they perform in Australia, ought to have to do with producing company entities, not easy investments. It should have to do with creating actual tasks, not specify computations about the indirect development of jobs, which is currently part of the regulation.


Possibly that is just one of the reasons that it has actually stopped working time after time to reach the legal goal of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Center Program is inherently clumsy, and the program is also filled with intermediaries, both public and private. The program has more than its share of rumors, which I will enter later if anyone is interested.


This is a firm that loves to state yes to candidates, but as the table in my statement reveals, USCIS officers have much extra trouble with EB-5 applications than others. I assume that is something that no one has truly chatted about 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 people who might not get them any other way and to people whose planned investment is actually less, according to the Federal Reserve, than the average mean total assets of all American family members in 2007. Allow me increase on one of my observations.


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


So for every $100 of raised international financial investment that year, the EB program contributed one penny. Under a a lot more shaky analytical base, the first applications of prospective immigrant financiers, USCIS is telling journalists that the level of investment in the just-concluded year was concerning $1.2 billion. Allow us approve that.

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Thank you for listening to me. I look ahead to your comments and concerns. [The prepared statement of David North looks like an entry for the document.] Chairman Leahy. Thanks. Our next 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 functioned as Chief Counsel of the USA Citizenship and Immigration Services from July 2004 till November 2006, the year in which he was Performing Director, and afterwards Acting Deputy Supervisor. He has worked thoroughly with the EB-5 program in personal practice. He was chosen, as I understand, vice head of state of the Association to Spend in USA, the nationwide market organization of regional.


Divine, we are happy to have you right here. Please go on, sir. STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, LAWYER, BAKER, DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL, AND BERKOWITZ, P.C., CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, AND VICE PRESIDENT, BUY THE USA (IIUSA) Mr. Divine. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, Senator Grassley, and others. Thank you for having me.


At most, if all 10,000 slots were made use of, it would be 1 percent of the migration annually to the USA. It is not near that yet, yet it is growing and obtaining towards that. Particularly as USCIS, the company that oversees the program, has been making the regulations clearer and the processes extra rational and clear for individuals that are arranging investments and for the financiers that are investing, even more individuals have agreed and able to place initiative and money into the process to locate excellent projects and develop them, and after that extra investors have actually wanted to spend their money and take the risk and utilize the cash to develop the work that is the point of the program.

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These tasks do not wait about permanently, and USCIS comprehends that and are trying to speed the program, speed up the procedure - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not indicate that they are relaxing their scrutiny, and, in fact, they are ready to deny applications that are not certifying. And they do so, as was stated


The local facility part of the program is not. It becomes part of an appropriations bill that was passed in 1992, and ever since that program has actually been extended five times for 19 years. It is time for it to be irreversible, and it needs to be done now and not nearer to the day of expiry in September.


The process takes a great while to function up a project and afterwards to get the financiers accepted. And they do not want their money streaming via until they have actually been accepted. And the specter of the expiration more info of this Regional Center Program in September is currently dissuading the growth of tasks.

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I wish to clear up 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 law that becomes part of the code. It just is a reality that most of the regional facilities that are pooling investments have actually established those in areas of high joblessness or in country areas where half- million-dollar investments are allowed, and that makes good sense.