Memes, apocrypha, obfuscation, head feints, hand-wringing, and supposition: These are the misleading and unreliable stuff of the Interweb. To a great extent, alas, they also infect the EB-5 ecospace. This article will avoid conjecture and look at the few hard facts we know about Trump Administration appointees and the positions they will hold, while encouraging
"EB-5 visa"
Soothsayings on Changes to the EB-5 Immigrant Investment Program
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
~ Yogi Berra
The talk of the nation – at least that segment interested in U.S. green card benefits available to foreign investors – is about the welcome or feared changes likely to occur in the EB-5 employment-creation immigration investor visa program. Scuttlebutt and divination have…
Venture Capitalists and Immigration Proponents Likely Disappointed by USCIS Proposed Entrepreneurial Parolee Rule
The Department of Homeland Security, through its component agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), has issued a proposed regulation to allow a qualified foreign citizen to gain entry and be employed in the United States if he or she will engage in activities that are likely to “increase and enhance entrepreneurship, innovation, and job…
All Checks but No Balances — The Systemic Failure to Protect EB-5 Investors
Several widely-publicized actions by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), and the inevitable litigation that has piled on in consequence, have pressure-tested the EB-5 ecosystem and found it defective. Simply stated, the system too likely and too often fails. Sadly, many EB-5 investors, after writing half-million-dollar or greater checks, ultimately have learned that no balances remain…
Memo to Immigration Reformers: “First catch your [EB-5] hare!”
Winston Churchill, whose mother was American (Jennie Jerome of Brooklyn), could just as well have been speaking about the components of comprehensive immigration reform. Instead he was commenting on the Allies’ post-World War II plans for world governance when, in the summer of 1942 with the war yet unwon, he said:
I hope these speculative studies…
The EB-5 Investor Immigration Program: Green Shoots or Chutes and Ladders?
The EB-5 immigrant investor green card program resembles a multi-country version of Chutes and Ladders, the “game of rewards and consequences“. In the EB-5 edition, the ladder represents progress toward a green card and the chute is an ICE-tunneled luge ride ending in immigration court at a removal hearing.
This comparison only…
Immigration Quibbles and Bites: The Fortnight in Review
It’s been a momentous, startling and exasperating two weeks. The Supreme Court ended the term with three blockbuster decisions, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) held a less-noticed public engagement that knocked the socks off one important segment of the stakeholder community.
- In Arizona v. United States, the Court — notwithstanding the ludicrous
…