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Initially, the program is placed in a really odd and non-helpful administrative area for the excitement of international investment in the United States. Second, its range is all wrong. We are handing out way too much for as well little of an investment. Additionally, increasing equity capital half a million bucks a tranche is, to say the least, ineffective.

The local centers, with their half-million systems, essentially undercut the a lot more sensible million-dollar part of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them in all, as they carry out in Australia, ought to have to do with developing company entities, not easy investments. It ought to have to do with producing actual jobs, not specify estimations regarding the indirect production of work, which is now part of the legislation.


Maybe that is one of the reasons that it has fallen short every year to reach the legal goal of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Center Program is inherently awkward, and the program is also full of intermediaries, both public and exclusive. The program has more than its share of scandals, which I will obtain right into later if anybody is interested.


This is a firm that loves to say yes to candidates, yet as the table in my testimony shows, USCIS policemans have far more problem with EB-5 applications than others. I think that is something that no one has actually actually discussed a lot. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high rates of internal rejections in this program and completely reason

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Seventh, in this program visas go to individuals that could not get them any other means and to individuals whose planned investment is actually much less, according to the Federal Get, than the average mean net worth of all American family members in 2007. Allow me expand on among my observations.


My estimate based upon the capitalists' permit applications filed 2 years after the initial investment-- these are the solid ones that continue to be and are accepted. This is 2009-- was that they had about $191 million confirmed-- that is my price quote. USCIS does not give the type of data that we can make use of on this.


So for every single $100 of raised international investment that year, the EB program added one cent. Under a far more unsteady statistical base, the first applications of would-be immigrant capitalists, USCIS is informing reporters that the level of financial investment in the just-concluded year had to do with $1.2 billion. Let us approve that.

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Thank you for paying attention to me. I look forward to your comments and concerns. [The prepared declaration of David North looks like a submission for the record.] Chairman Leahy. Thank you. Our next witness is Robert Divine. He is an investor of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, and Berkowitz. He is the head of the firm's immigration method group.

Divine acted as Chief Advice of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services from July 2004 up until November 2006, the year in which he was Performing Director, and then Acting Deputy Supervisor. He has functioned thoroughly with the EB-5 program secretive technique. He was elected, as I understand, vice head of state of find more info the Association to Buy United States, the national sector organization of regional centers.


Divine, we are happy to have you below. Please proceed, sir. DECLARATION OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, ATTORNEY, BAKER, DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL, AND BERKOWITZ, P.C., CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, AND VICE HEAD OF STATE, BUY THE U.S.A. (IIUSA) Mr. Divine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Grassley, and others. Thank you for having me.


At most, if all 10,000 slots were made use of, it would certainly be 1 percent of the immigration every year to the USA. It is not near that yet, however it is growing and getting toward that. Especially as USCIS, the firm that supervises the program, has actually been making the policies more clear and the procedures more reasonable and clear for individuals who are organizing investments and for the capitalists who are spending, even more individuals have been eager and able to put effort and cash into the process to discover excellent jobs and create them, and afterwards much more investors have been ready to spend their cash and take the danger and utilize the cash to develop the work that is the factor of the program.

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These projects do not wait about forever, and USCIS understands that and are attempting to speed up the program, speed up the process - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not mean that they are unwinding their examination, and, in reality, they are all set to reject applications that are not certifying. And they do so, as was stated

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


The process takes an excellent while to develop a task and after that to get the financiers accepted. And they do not want their cash flowing via till they have been authorized. And the specter of the expiry of link this Regional Center Program in September is already preventing the growth of tasks.

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I want to clarify that the Regional Facility Program is not the exact same as the half-million-dollar thing. The concept find of half a million or a million is a feature of the routine EB-5 law that is component of the code. It just is a reality that a lot of the local centers that are merging investments have established those in locations of high unemployment or in country areas where half- million-dollar investments are enabled, and that makes sense.