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The program is put in a really weird and non-helpful governmental location for the stimulation of international investment in the United States. We are providing away as well much for as well little of an investment.


The regional centers, with their half-million schemes, basically undercut the more sensible million-dollar component of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them whatsoever, as they do in Australia, should be concerning developing business entities, not passive investments. It needs to have to do with creating real work, not elaborate estimations regarding the indirect creation of work, which is now part of the regulation.


Maybe that is one of the reasons it has fallen short every year to get to the legislative 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 exclusive. The program has greater than its share of scandals, which I will obtain right into later if anyone is interested.


This is an agency that likes to say yes to candidates, yet as the table in my testimony reveals, USCIS policemans have far more problem with EB-5 applications than others. I believe that is something that no one has truly talked around a lot. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high rates of interior rejections in this program and forever factor

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Seventh, in this program visas most likely to individuals that could not obtain them differently and to individuals whose planned financial investment is really much less, according to the Federal Book, than the average mean total assets of all American family members in 2007. Allow me expand on among my monitorings.


My quote based upon the financiers' environment-friendly card applications filed 2 years after the first investment-- these are the solid ones that stay and are approved. This is 2009-- was that they had regarding $191 million verified-- that is my price quote. USCIS does not supply the sort of data that we can make use of on this.


For every $100 of raised foreign investment that year, the EB program added one penny. Under a much more shaky statistical base, the preliminary applications of potential immigrant capitalists, USCIS is informing reporters that the level of financial investment in the just-concluded year was regarding $1.2 billion. Allow us approve that.

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Thank you for listening to me. I eagerly anticipate your comments and questions. [The ready statement of David North shows up as 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 company's immigration technique group.




Divine acted as Principal Advise of the United States Citizenship and Migration Providers from July 2004 until November 2006, the year in which he was Acting Director, and then Performing Deputy Director. He has worked thoroughly with the EB-5 program in private practice. He was elected, as I comprehend, vice head of state of the Association to Invest in USA, the national industry association of local.


Divine, we are happy to have you right here. Please go ahead, sir. STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, LAWYER, BAKER, DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL, AND BERKOWITZ, P.C., CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, AND VICE HEAD OF STATE, PURCHASE THE USA (IIUSA) Mr. Divine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Grassley, and others. Thank you for having me.


At a lot of, if all 10,000 slots were used, it would certainly be 1 percent of the immigration annually to the United States. It is not near that yet, yet it is growing and obtaining towards that. Specifically as USCIS, the company that oversees the program, has been making the policies more clear and the processes much more reasonable and clear for individuals that are organizing investments and for the financiers who are investing, even more people have actually been willing and able to put effort and money into the process to discover excellent jobs and develop them, and after that extra financiers have actually wanted to spend their money and take the danger and make use of the cash to develop the jobs that is the point of the program.

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These tasks do not linger permanently, and USCIS understands here that and are trying to speed the program, speed up the process - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not suggest that they are relaxing their analysis, and, actually, they are prepared to refute applications that are not certifying. And they do so, as was discussed


The regional center component of the program is not. It belongs to an appropriations costs that was passed in 1992, and considering that then that program has actually been extended 5 times for 19 years. It is time for it to be irreversible, and it needs to be done currently and not nearer to the day of expiry in September.


The procedure takes an excellent while to work up a job and afterwards to obtain the financiers accepted. And they do not desire their cash flowing through until they have actually been accepted. And the specter of the expiration of this Regional Facility Program in September is currently preventing the advancement of jobs.

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I want to make clear that the Regional Center Program is not the like the half-million-dollar thing. The concept of half a million or a million is a function of the regular EB-5 regulation that belongs to the code. It simply is a reality that many of the regional centers that are pooling investments have established those in locations of high joblessness or in rural locations where half- million-dollar investments are permitted, and that makes good sense.