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The program is put in a really odd and non-helpful governmental location for the stimulation of global financial investment in the United States. Second, its scale is all incorrect. We are handing out way too much for also little of a financial investment. Further, elevating venture resources half a million dollars a tranche is, to state the least, ineffective.


The local facilities, with their half-million plans, essentially undercut the a lot more reasonable million-dollar part of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them at all, as they carry out in Australia, need to have to do with developing organization entities, not easy financial investments. It needs to have to do with developing actual tasks, not elaborate estimations about the indirect creation of work, which is now component of the regulations.


Probably that is just one of the reasons it has stopped working year after year to reach the legal objective of 10,000 investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Facility Program is inherently awkward, and the program is too loaded with middlemen, both public and personal. The program has greater than its share of scandals, which I will enter later if anyone is interested.


This is an agency that loves to claim yes to applicants, however as the table in my statement shows, USCIS officers have a lot more problem with EB-5 applications than others. I believe that is something that nobody has actually actually discussed a lot. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high prices of interior rejections in this program and forever reason

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Seventh, in this program visas most likely to individuals who might not get them any other way and to individuals whose organized investment is really much less, according to the Federal Get, than the typical mean net worth of all American households in 2007. Let me expand on one of my monitorings.


My price quote based on the financiers' permit applications filed 2 years after the very first investment-- these are the solid ones that stay and are authorized. This is 2009-- was that they had regarding $191 million verified-- that is my estimate. USCIS does not provide the kind of information that we could use on this.


So for every $100 of raised international financial investment that year, the EB program added one dime. Under a far more wobbly analytical base, the preliminary applications of potential immigrant investors, USCIS is telling reporters that the level of financial investment in the just-concluded year had to do with $1.2 billion. Allow us accept that.

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Thanks for listening to me. I anticipate your remarks and concerns. [The ready statement of David North looks like a submission for the document.] Chairman Leahy. Thank you. Our next witness is Robert Divine. He is a shareholder of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, and Berkowitz. He is the head of the company's immigration practice team.




Divine acted as Principal Advise of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Providers from July 2004 until November 2006, the year in which he was Acting Director, and after that Acting Deputy Supervisor. He has actually functioned thoroughly with the EB-5 program in personal technique. He was elected, as I comprehend, vice head of state of the Association to Spend in United States, the nationwide sector association of regional.


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


At a lot of, if all 10,000 slots were used, it would certainly be 1 percent of the migration yearly to the USA. It is not near that yet, yet it is growing and obtaining toward that. Especially as USCIS, the agency that supervises the program, has actually been making the rules more clear and the processes extra rational and clear for the individuals who are arranging investments and for the financiers that are spending, even more individuals have actually been willing and able to place effort and cash into the process to find great tasks and develop them, and after that a lot more financiers have been prepared to invest their cash and take the risk and make use of the cash to create the tasks that is the factor of the program.

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These tasks do not linger forever, and USCIS recognizes that and are trying to speed the program, speed the process - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not suggest that they are unwinding their scrutiny, and, as a matter of fact, they prepare to refute applications that are not certifying. And they do so, as was discussed


The regional facility component of the program is not. It is component of an appropriations costs that was established in 1992, and ever since that program has been extended 5 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 date of expiry in September.


The process takes an excellent while to develop a job and after that to get the investors approved. And they do not desire their cash moving through until they have been authorized. And the specter of the expiration of this Regional Facility Program here in September is currently preventing the advancement of projects.

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I wish to make clear 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 feature of the routine EB-5 regulation that is component of the code. It simply is a fact that a lot of the local centers that are merging investments have actually set those in areas of high unemployment or in backwoods where half- million-dollar investments are enabled, and that makes sense.