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The program is put in a very odd and non-helpful bureaucratic place for the stimulation of worldwide financial investment in the United States. We are giving away also much for as well tiny of a financial investment.


The local centers, with their half-million schemes, essentially undercut the more reasonable million-dollar component of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them whatsoever, as they do in Australia, should be regarding creating service entities, not easy investments. It ought to be concerning developing real jobs, not elaborate calculations regarding the indirect creation of tasks, which is currently component of the regulations.


Possibly that is one of the factors why it has failed year after year to get to the legal objective of 10,000 investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Facility Program is naturally awkward, and the program is also filled up with middlemen, both public and exclusive. The program has more than its share of detractions, which I will certainly get involved in later if anyone is interested.


This is an agency that likes to state yes to candidates, yet as the table in my testament shows, USCIS police officers have a lot extra problem 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 internal denials in this program and forever reason

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Seventh, in this program visas most likely to people that might not get them otherwise and to individuals whose planned investment is in fact much less, according to the Federal Book, than the average mean internet worth of all American households in 2007. Let me expand on one of my observations.


My price quote based upon the financiers' eco-friendly card applications submitted 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 confirmed-- that is my estimate. USCIS does not provide the kind of information that we might utilize on this.


So for every single $100 of raised international investment that year, the EB program contributed one penny. Under a a lot more wobbly statistical base, the initial applications of prospective immigrant capitalists, USCIS is telling reporters that the degree of investment in the just-concluded year had to do with $1.2 billion. Let us accept that.

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Thank you for listening to me. I anticipate your remarks and inquiries. [The prepared statement of David North appears as a submission for the record.] 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 migration technique group.




Divine functioned as Principal Counsel of the USA Citizenship and Migration Services from July 2004 until November 2006, the year in which he was Acting Supervisor, and afterwards Acting Replacement Director. He has functioned extensively with the EB-5 program in private practice. He was elected, as important link I understand, vice president of the Association to Spend in USA, the nationwide industry organization of local.


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


At a lot of, if all 10,000 ports were used, it would be 1 percent of the immigration every year to the United States. It is not near that yet, yet it is growing and obtaining towards that. Especially as USCIS, the firm that looks after the program, has actually been making the policies more clear and the procedures a lot more sensible and clear for individuals that are arranging financial investments and for the financiers that are investing, even more individuals have agreed and able to put initiative and cash right into the process to discover excellent jobs and create them, and after that much more financiers have actually agreed to spend their cash and take the threat and make use of the cash to develop the jobs that is the point of the program.

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These jobs do not linger forever, and USCIS recognizes that and are attempting to speed up the program, speed up the procedure - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not imply that they are unwinding their examination, and, as a matter of fact, they prepare to Learn More deny applications that are not certifying. And they do so, as was mentioned


The local center component of the program is not. It belongs to an appropriations bill that was enacted in 1992, and considering that then that program has actually been extended five times for 19 years. It is time for it to be long-term, and it needs to be done currently 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 obtain the investors approved. And they do not want their cash streaming via until they have actually been accepted. And the specter of the expiry of this Regional Center Program in September is currently discouraging the growth of projects.

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I wish to make clear that the Regional Facility Program is not the very same as the half-million-dollar point. The idea of half a million or a million is a best site feature of the regular EB-5 law that belongs to the code. It simply is a fact that the majority of the regional centers that are pooling investments have established those in places of high joblessness or in backwoods where fifty percent- million-dollar investments are permitted, and that makes sense.