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The program is placed in a very odd and non-helpful governmental location for the excitement of worldwide investment in the United States. We are providing away too much for too tiny of a financial investment.

The local centers, with their half-million plans, basically undercut the more practical million-dollar part of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them in any way, as they do in Australia, need to have to do with producing business entities, not easy investments. It needs to be concerning producing real jobs, not clarify calculations regarding the indirect creation of tasks, which is now component of the regulations.


Probably that is among the reasons that it has fallen short every year to reach the legal goal of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Facility Program is inherently clumsy, and the program is also full of intermediaries, both public and personal. The program has more than its share of scandals, which I will enter into later if any person is interested.


This is an agency that enjoys to claim yes to applicants, but as the table in my testimony reveals, USCIS police officers have far more trouble with EB-5 applications than others. I believe that is something that nobody has actually spoken about much. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high rates of inner denials in this program and for excellent factor

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Seventh, in this program visas go to individuals that could not get them differently and to individuals whose planned financial investment is really less, according to the Federal Get, than the average mean total assets of all American families in 2007. Allow me increase on one of my monitorings.


My price quote based on the investors' environment-friendly card applications submitted 2 years after the first financial investment-- these are the strong ones that stay and are approved. This is 2009-- was that they had concerning $191 million confirmed-- that is my estimate. USCIS does not supply the type of data that we could use on this.


So for every $100 of increased international financial investment that year, the EB program contributed one dime. Under a much extra unsteady statistical base, the initial applications of potential immigrant investors, USCIS is telling reporters that the level of financial investment in the just-concluded year was regarding $1.2 billion. Let us accept that.

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Thanks for paying attention to me. I eagerly anticipate your comments and concerns. [The prepared declaration of David North looks like a submission for the record.] Chairman Leahy. Thank you. Our following witness is Robert Divine. He is an investor of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, and Berkowitz. He is the head of the company's migration technique team.

Divine functioned as Chief Counsel of the USA Citizenship and Immigration Solutions from July 2004 up until November 2006, the year in which he was Performing Supervisor, and after that Acting Replacement Director. He has actually functioned thoroughly with the EB-5 program in personal technique. He was chosen, as I understand, vice president of the Association to Invest in USA, the nationwide sector organization of regional.


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


At the majority of, if all 10,000 ports were utilized, it would be 1 percent of the immigration every year to the United States. It is not near that yet, however it is growing and obtaining towards that. Particularly as USCIS, the agency that supervises the program, has actually been making the policies more clear and the processes much more logical and clear for individuals who are arranging investments and for the capitalists that are spending, more people have been ready and able to place effort and cash right into the process to discover excellent jobs and create them, and after that a lot more investors have actually been willing to invest their money and take the danger and utilize the cash to create the jobs that is the factor of the program.

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These tasks do not linger permanently, and USCIS comprehends that and are attempting to speed the program, speed the process - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not mean that they are relaxing their examination, and, in truth, they prepare to refute applications that are not certifying. And they do so, as was pointed out

The local facility component of the program is not. It belongs to an appropriations costs that was enacted in 1992, and considering that then that program has been extended 5 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 expiry in September.


The process takes a good while to develop a project and afterwards to obtain the capitalists accepted. And they do not desire their money flowing through up until they have been accepted. And the specter of the expiration of this Regional Facility Program in September is already discouraging the growth of projects.

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I wish to clear up that the Regional more info Facility Program is not the like the half-million-dollar thing. The concept of half a million or a million is a feature of the routine EB-5 legislation that is part of the code. It just is a truth that a lot of the regional facilities that are pooling financial investments have established those instead of high joblessness or in rural areas where fifty percent- million-dollar financial investments are permitted, which makes good sense.