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


The local facilities, with their half-million schemes, basically damaged the a lot more sensible million-dollar component of the EB-5 program. Third, such programs, if we have them at all, as they carry out in Australia, must have to do with developing organization entities, not passive investments. It must be concerning developing real tasks, not elaborate estimations concerning the indirect development of tasks, which is currently component of the legislation.


Possibly that is among the reasons why it has failed every year to reach the legislative objective of 10,000 investment visas. Fifth, the Regional Center Program is naturally clumsy, and the program is also loaded with middlemen, both public and private. The program has even more than its share of scandals, which I will certainly obtain into later on if anybody is interested.


This is an agency that loves to claim yes to applicants, yet as the table in my statement reveals, USCIS police officers have far more trouble with EB-5 applications than others. I believe that is something that nobody has actually really discussed a lot. EB5 Regional Center Program. There are high rates of internal rejections in this program and permanently reason

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Seventh, in this program visas go to people that could not get them otherwise and to people whose organized financial investment is actually much less, according to the Federal Get, than the average mean internet worth of all American households in 2007. Let me expand on one of my observations.


My price quote based on the financiers' copyright applications filed 2 years after the very first financial investment-- these are the strong ones that stay and are authorized. This is 2009-- was that they had about $191 million validated-- that is my estimate. USCIS does not give the kind of information that we might use on this.


For every $100 of increased foreign financial investment that year, the EB program added one dime. Under a far more wobbly statistical base, the initial applications of would-be immigrant financiers, USCIS is informing reporters that the level of investment in the just-concluded year was regarding $1.2 billion. Let us accept that.

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Thanks for listening to me. I anticipate your remarks and inquiries. [The ready declaration of David North appears as a submission for the document.] Chairman Leahy. Thanks. 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 technique group.




Divine worked as Chief Guidance 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 Acting Deputy Director. He has actually functioned thoroughly with the EB-5 program in personal practice. He was elected, as I understand, vice president of the Association to Invest in U.S.A., the national sector organization of local.


Divine, we are delighted to have you 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, BUY 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 ports were utilized, it would certainly be 1 percent of the migration each year to the USA. It is not near that yet, however it is growing and obtaining towards that. Especially as USCIS, the firm that oversees the program, has actually been making the guidelines clearer and the procedures extra sensible and clear for individuals who are organizing financial investments and for the investors that are investing, more individuals have agreed and able to put initiative and cash into the process to find excellent jobs and develop them, and after that more capitalists have been eager to spend their money and take the danger and use the cash to produce the work that is the point of the program.

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These tasks do not linger for life, and USCIS understands that and are attempting to speed the program, speed the process - EB5 Regional Center Program. That does not mean that they are unwinding their scrutiny, and, actually, they prepare to deny applications that are not qualifying. And they do so, as was discussed


The regional facility component of the program is not. It is read more component of an appropriations bill that was passed 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 day of expiry in September.


The process takes an excellent while to work up a task and after that to obtain the capitalists authorized. And they do not desire their cash flowing via until they have been accepted. And the specter of the expiration of this Regional Center Program in September is currently inhibiting the advancement of tasks.

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I want to make clear 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 normal EB-5 law that is component of the code. It simply is a reality that a lot of the regional centers that are merging investments have set those in locations of high unemployment or in backwoods where half- million-dollar financial investments are allowed, and that makes good sense.