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Initially, the program is positioned in an extremely weird and non-helpful governmental area for the excitement of worldwide financial investment in the United States. Second, its range is all wrong. We are distributing too much for also tiny of an investment. Further, raising equity capital fifty percent a million dollars a tranche is, to claim the least, ineffective.


The regional centers, with their half-million plans, basically damaged the more practical million-dollar component of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them whatsoever, as they carry out in Australia, ought to have to do with creating organization entities, not easy financial investments. It must be regarding creating actual jobs, not specify estimations concerning the indirect development of jobs, which is currently part of the legislation.


Maybe that is just one of the factors why it has actually fallen short year after year to reach the legislative goal of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Center Program is naturally clumsy, and the program is as well full of intermediaries, both public and personal. The program has greater than its share of scandals, which I will certainly enter into later if anybody is interested.


This is a company that loves to claim yes to applicants, however as the table in my testament shows, USCIS officers have far more trouble with EB-5 applications than others. I believe that is something that nobody has actually really spoken about much. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high rates of interior rejections in this program and for excellent factor

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Seventh, in this program visas go to individuals that could not obtain them otherwise and to people whose planned financial investment is actually much less, according to the Federal Get, than the typical mean web well worth of all American families in 2007. Allow me broaden on one of my observations.


My estimate based on the investors' permit applications filed 2 years after the very first investment-- these are the strong ones that continue to be and are approved. This is 2009-- was that they had concerning $191 million validated-- that is my price quote. USCIS does not give the kind of data that we could use on this.


For every $100 of boosted foreign investment that year, the EB program contributed one dime. Under a much more unsteady analytical base, the first applications of would-be immigrant financiers, USCIS is telling reporters that the degree of investment in the just-concluded year was regarding $1.2 billion. Allow us accept that.

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Thanks for paying attention to me. I expect your comments and concerns. [The prepared statement of David North appears as an entry for the document.] Chairman Leahy. Thanks. Our next witness is Robert Divine. He is an investor of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, and Berkowitz. He is the head of the company's immigration practice group.




Divine functioned as Principal Counsel of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Providers from July 2004 up until November 2006, the year in which he was Acting Director, and afterwards Acting Replacement Director. He has actually functioned thoroughly with the EB-5 program in exclusive technique. He was chosen, as I understand, vice head of state of the Association to Invest in USA, the national market organization of regional.


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


At most, if all 10,000 ports were used, it would certainly be 1 percent of the immigration yearly to the United States. It is not near that yet, yet it is growing and obtaining toward that. Particularly as USCIS, the company that manages the program, has been making the policies more clear and the procedures extra rational and clear for the people that are arranging financial investments and for the financiers that are spending, more people have agreed and able to put effort and money their website into the process to discover excellent tasks and establish them, and after that extra investors have wanted to spend their money and take the danger and use the money to develop the tasks that is the factor of the program.

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These projects do not linger for life, and USCIS recognizes that and are attempting to speed the program, speed the procedure - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not suggest that they are relaxing their scrutiny, and, as a matter of fact, they are all set to refute 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 passed in 1992, and ever since that program has 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 date of expiration in September.


The process takes a great while to develop a job and then to get the investors accepted. And they do not want their money streaming through up until they have actually been approved. And the specter of the expiration of this Regional Center Program in September is already dissuading the advancement of jobs.

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I that site want to clarify that the Regional Facility Program is not the same as weblink the half-million-dollar thing. The concept of half a million or a million is a function of the normal EB-5 law that is part of the code. It simply is a reality that the majority of the local centers that are merging investments have actually set those instead of high joblessness or in backwoods where half- million-dollar investments are permitted, and that makes good sense.