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The program is put in a very weird and non-helpful administrative place for the stimulation of worldwide financial investment in the United States. We are offering away as well much for as well little of a financial investment.


The local facilities, with their half-million schemes, basically undercut the much more sensible million-dollar component of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them at all, as they do in Australia, need to have to do with developing organization entities, not passive financial investments. It ought to be regarding developing genuine jobs, not elaborate computations regarding the indirect development of tasks, which is currently component of the regulations.


Perhaps that is among the reasons that it has failed year after year to reach the legal objective of 10,000 investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Center Program is inherently awkward, and the program is too filled up with middlemen, both public and private. The program has greater than its share of scandals, which I will certainly get right into later on if anybody is interested.


This is a company that loves to say yes to applicants, but as the table in my testimony reveals, USCIS officers have far more problem with EB-5 applications than others. I assume that is something that no one has truly spoken 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 individuals that can not obtain them any type of other way and to people whose scheduled investment is in fact less, according to the Federal Reserve, than the typical mean web worth of all American families in 2007. Let me broaden on one of my observations.


My quote based on the investors' copyright applications submitted 2 years after the initial investment-- these are the strong ones that stay and are accepted. This is 2009-- was that they had about $191 million verified-- that is my estimate. USCIS does not supply the sort of data that we might use on this.


For every $100 of enhanced foreign investment that year, the EB program added one cent. Under a a lot more wobbly statistical base, the preliminary applications of would-be immigrant investors, USCIS is telling reporters that the level of investment in the just-concluded year was concerning $1.2 billion. Allow us accept that.

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Thanks for paying attention to me. I anticipate your remarks and questions. [The ready declaration of David North go to the website looks like a submission for the record.] 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 firm's migration practice team.




Divine served as Principal Advice of the United States Citizenship and Migration Providers from July 2004 until November 2006, the year in which he was Acting Supervisor, and after that Performing Deputy Supervisor. He has actually worked thoroughly with the EB-5 program secretive technique. He was elected, as I recognize, vice president of the Association to Invest in USA, the nationwide industry organization of regional centers.


Divine, we are happy to have you right here. Please proceed, sir. STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. DIVINE, LAWYER, BAKER, DONELSON, BEARMAN, CALDWELL, AND BERKOWITZ, P.C., CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, AND VICE HEAD OF STATE, INVEST IN THE U.S.A. (IIUSA) Mr. Divine. Thanks, Mr. link Chairman, Legislator Grassley, and others. Thanks for having me.


At the majority of, if all 10,000 slots were utilized, it would certainly be 1 percent of the migration annually to the United States. It is not near that yet, however it is expanding and obtaining toward that. Especially as USCIS, the agency that supervises the program, has been making the policies more clear and the procedures a lot more logical and clear for the individuals that are arranging investments and for the financiers who are investing, more individuals have been prepared and able to place initiative and money right into the procedure to locate excellent tasks and develop them, and after that more investors have wanted to invest their cash and take the danger and use the cash to create the jobs that is the factor of the program.

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These tasks do not linger forever, and USCIS understands that and are attempting to speed up the program, speed up the process - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not indicate that they are relaxing their analysis, and, as a matter of fact, they prepare to deny applications that are not qualifying. And they do so, as was pointed out


The regional center component of the program is not. It becomes part of an appropriations costs that was enacted in 1992, and since then that program has been expanded five 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 expiration in September.


The process takes a great while to function up a task and afterwards to obtain the capitalists accepted. And they do not desire their money streaming through up until they have been accepted. And the specter of the expiration of this Regional Center Program in September is already preventing the advancement of jobs.

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I would certainly such as to make clear that the Regional see here Facility Program is not the same as the half-million-dollar point. The idea of half a million or a million is a function of the regular EB-5 law that belongs to the code. It simply is a truth that a lot of the regional facilities that are merging financial investments have set those instead of high joblessness or in backwoods where fifty percent- million-dollar investments are allowed, and that makes good sense.