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First, the program is positioned in a very strange and non-helpful administrative location for the excitement of international financial investment in the United States. Second, its range is all incorrect. We are distributing way too much for too small of a financial investment. Better, raising endeavor capital fifty percent a million dollars a tranche is, to claim the least, ineffective.


The regional facilities, with their half-million plans, essentially undercut the a lot more reasonable million-dollar component of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them whatsoever, as they carry out in Australia, need to be about producing company entities, not passive financial investments. It should have to do with creating genuine work, not clarify estimations regarding the indirect production of work, which is currently part of the legislation.


Maybe that is just one of the reasons it has fallen short time after time to get to the legislative goal of 10,000 financial investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Facility Program is naturally awkward, and the program is too full of intermediaries, both public and personal. The program has greater than its share of detractions, which I will get involved in later if anyone is interested.


This is an agency that loves to claim yes to candidates, yet as the table in my testimony shows, USCIS policemans have far more problem with EB-5 applications than others. I believe that is something that nobody has actually actually chatted about much. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high rates of internal denials in this program and completely reason

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Seventh, in this program visas go to people that might not obtain them differently and to individuals whose scheduled investment is really less, according to the Federal Reserve, than the ordinary mean total assets of all American families in 2007. Allow me broaden on among my monitorings.


My estimate based on the financiers' copyright applications submitted 2 years after the initial investment-- these are the solid ones that remain and are accepted. This is 2009-- was that they had concerning $191 million validated-- that is my estimate. USCIS does not offer the type of information that we can utilize on this.


So for every $100 of increased foreign financial investment that year, the EB program added one dime. Under a far more shaky statistical base, the first applications of would-be immigrant capitalists, USCIS is informing reporters that the degree of financial investment in the just-concluded year had to do with $1.2 billion. Let us accept that.

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Thank you for paying attention to me. I anticipate your remarks and concerns. [The prepared declaration of David North shows up as an entry 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 immigration method team.




Divine offered as Principal Counsel of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Solutions from July 2004 till November 2006, the year in which he was Performing Supervisor, and after that Performing Deputy Supervisor. He has actually worked thoroughly with the EB-5 program secretive practice. He was elected, as I understand, vice president of the Organization to Purchase U.S.A., the nationwide sector organization of local centers.


Divine, we are pleased to have you here. Please go on, sir. STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, LAWYER, BAKER, website DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL, AND BERKOWITZ, P.C., CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, AND VICE HEAD OF STATE, INVEST IN THE USA (IIUSA) Mr. Divine. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, Legislator Grassley, and others. Thanks for having me.


At most, if all 10,000 ports were made use of, it would be 1 percent of the immigration every year to the USA. It is not near that yet, but it is growing and getting towards that. Specifically as USCIS, the company that manages the program, has actually been making the regulations more clear and the processes a lot more rational and clear for individuals that are arranging investments and for the investors who are investing, more individuals have actually wanted and able to put effort and cash into the process to locate good projects and establish them, and after that a lot more capitalists have actually been ready to invest their money and take the risk and use the money to produce the tasks that is the factor of the program.

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These jobs do not linger forever, and USCIS recognizes that and are attempting to speed up the program, speed up the procedure - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not mean that they are unwinding their examination, and, as a matter of fact, they are ready to deny applications that are not qualifying. And they do so, as was pointed out


The local facility component of the program is not. It becomes part of an appropriations expense 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 requires to be done currently and not nearer to the day of expiry in September.


The process takes a good while to function up a job and after that to obtain the financiers approved. And they do not want their cash moving with until they have actually been approved. And the specter of the expiry of this Regional Facility Program in September is already discouraging the development of jobs.

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I would love to clarify that the Regional Center Program is not the very same as the half-million-dollar thing. The concept of half a million or a million is a function of the regular EB-5 law that becomes part of the code. It just is a reality that a lot of the regional centers that are pooling investments have set those instead of high joblessness or in rural locations where fifty percent- million-dollar financial investments are enabled, which makes good sense.