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The program is put in a really weird and non-helpful governmental area for the stimulation of international investment in the United States. Second, its scale is all wrong. We are giving away way too much for also tiny of a financial investment. Further, raising equity capital fifty percent a million dollars a tranche is, to say the least, ineffective.


The local facilities, with their half-million systems, basically damaged the a lot more reasonable million-dollar part of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them in any way, as they do in Australia, should be about developing organization entities, not passive financial investments. It must have to do with creating real jobs, not clarify calculations concerning the indirect development of tasks, which is now component of the regulation.


Perhaps that is just one of the reasons why it has fallen short year after year to reach the legislative goal of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Facility Program is naturally clumsy, and the program is as well loaded with middlemen, both public and personal. The program has greater than its share of detractions, which I will enter later on if anybody is interested.


This is a firm that likes to state yes to applicants, but as the table in my testimony shows, USCIS policemans have far more trouble with EB-5 applications than others. I believe that is something that nobody has truly discussed a lot. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high prices of inner rejections in this program and permanently reason

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Seventh, in this program visas most likely to individuals who might not obtain them differently and to individuals whose planned investment is actually less, according to the Federal Book, than the typical mean net well worth of all American families in 2007. Let me expand on among my observations.


My price quote based upon the investors' permit applications filed 2 years after the first investment-- these are the strong ones that continue to be and are accepted. This is 2009-- was that they had concerning $191 million validated-- that is my quote. USCIS does not offer the type of information that we can make use of on this.


For every $100 of enhanced foreign investment that year, the EB program added one dime. Under a a lot more unsteady analytical base, the preliminary applications of potential immigrant capitalists, USCIS is informing reporters that the level of financial investment in the just-concluded year was about $1.2 billion. Let us accept that.

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Thanks for listening to me. I anticipate your comments and questions. [The prepared statement of David North looks like an entry 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 migration method team.




Divine served as Chief Advice of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services from July 2004 until November 2006, the year in which he was Acting Director, and afterwards Acting Deputy Supervisor. He has worked thoroughly with the EB-5 program in private technique. He was elected, as I recognize, vice president of the Organization to Spend in U.S.A., the national market organization of local.


DECLARATION OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, ATTORNEY, 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 a lot of, if all 10,000 ports were made use of, it would be 1 percent of the immigration each year to the United States. It is not near that yet, however it is expanding and obtaining towards that. Particularly as USCIS, the firm that looks after the program, has been making the policies more clear and the procedures a lot more rational and clear for the individuals that are arranging investments and for the financiers who are investing, more individuals have wanted and able to place initiative and cash into the process to find great tasks and develop them, and after that a lot more check here investors have agreed to invest their money and take the risk and make use of the cash to develop the jobs that is the point of the program.

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These jobs do not linger permanently, and USCIS comprehends that and are attempting to speed up the program, speed the procedure - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not imply that they are relaxing their scrutiny, and, actually, they prepare to reject applications that are not certifying. And they do so, as was discussed


The regional facility part of the program is not. It becomes part of an appropriations costs that was established in 1992, and ever since that program has been expanded 5 times for 19 years. It is time for it to be permanent, and it requires to be done currently and not nearer to the date of expiration in September.


The procedure takes an excellent while to develop a job and afterwards to get the investors accepted. And they do not want their cash moving through up until they have been accepted. And the specter of the expiration of this Regional Facility Program in September is already inhibiting the development of jobs.

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I wish to clarify that the Regional Center Program is not the exact same as the half-million-dollar thing. The idea of half a million or a million is a function of the normal EB-5 legislation that becomes part of the code. It just is a truth that a lot of the regional facilities that are pooling financial investments have actually set those in areas of high unemployment or in country areas where half- million-dollar investments are enabled, which makes good sense.