EB-5 Visa Program News Blog: FY12 Q1 EB-5 Statistics

EB-5 Visa Program News Blog: FY12 Q1 EB-5 Statistics: USCIS has released new statistics as part of the presentation for the 1/23 EB-5 Stakeholder Meeting . Form I-924 (& Pre-I-...

FY12 Q1 EB-5 Statistics

USCIS has released new statistics as part of the presentation for the 1/23 EB-5 Stakeholder Meeting.

Form I-924 (& Pre-I-924) Regional Center Initial Applications
Fiscal Year or Quarter	Receipts	Approvals	Denials
FY12 Q1	41	14	22
FY11	192	80	51
FY10	110	36	30

Form I-924 (& Pre-I-924) Regional Center Amendment Requests
Fiscal Year or Quarter	Receipts	Approvals	Denials
FY12 Q1	17	4	3
FY11	86	43	7
FY10	42	42	11

Form I-526 Petition Final Actions
Fiscal Year and/or Quarter	Form I-526 Approvals	Final Action %	Form I-526 Denials	Final Action %
FY12 Q1	1,076	83%	222	17%
FY11	1,563	81%	371	19%
FY10	1,369	89%	165	11%
FY09	1,262	86%	207	14%
FY08	640	84%	120	16%
FY07	473	76%	148	24%
FY06	336	73%	124	27%
FY05	179	53%	156	47%

Form I-829 Petition Final Actions
Fiscal Year and/or Quarter	Form I-829 Approvals	Final Action %	Form I-829 Denials	Final Action %
FY12 Q1	144	93%	11	7%
FY11	1,067	96%	46	4%
FY10	274	83%	56	17%
FY09	347	86%	56	14%
FY08	159	70%	68	30%
FY07	111	69%	49	31%
FY06	106	64%	59	36%
FY05	184	62%	112	38%

EB-5 Visa Usage
Fiscal Year	Total EB-5 Visas Issued
FY12 YTD*	2,364
FY11	3,463
FY10	1,885
FY09	4,218
FY08	1,360
FY07	806
FY06	744
FY05	158
*Estimate of FY12 Visas Issued YTD, reported by the Department of State as of 01/17/2012.

Attention: International Students EB-5 is for you!

Attention: International Students EB-5 is for you!

Second semester senior year is supposed to be both exciting and relaxing for college students. Finishing up your major, interviewing for jobs, and planning trips to Europe consume your last few months as a full-time student. But what if that trip you were planning—Europe, Asia, anywhere—was going to be permanent? At this time, international students studying in the United States are faced not only with a slow and challenging economy and job market; they are also struggling to get sponsorship for H-1 or work visas.

Consider this scenario: At age 18, you receive a student visa and decide to study in the United States. It is 2008, and while the job market is not completely awful in the U.S., you are confident that things will turn around by the time you are ready to graduate in 2012. Now, fast forward through those four years of undergrad. It is now 2012 and you are getting ready to walk across that stage. Nerves set in, because the job market has not picked up as hoped and the companies that are hiring graduates are looking to hire U.S. citizens and forego the H-1 or work visa paper process. You feel stuck. You feel helpless. You have just spent the last four years of your life networking, studying, interning, and giving everything you could to your community and now you have no choice but to leave. Wasn’t the reason you decided to study in the United States in the first place to learn as much as you could and then find a job and stay here? Your dreams are shattered.

Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC (CFIG) understands your concerns and offers you an option that will allow you obtain a U.S. Green Card within one year and restore those dreams. It is called EB-5. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) EB-5 immigrant investor program is designed to address the issues of job creation and economic development while, at the same time, providing investors with U.S. Green Cards. CFIG has been designated as a USCIS EB-5 regional center, allowing them facilitate match EB-5 qualifying projects with EB-5 investors.

The minimum investment requirement for EB-5 is $500,000 in a targeted employment area or $1,000,000 in any other area within an EB-5 regional center’s designated operating area. By investing through an EB-5 regional center, like CFIG, much of the stress investors fear is alleviated. CFIG vets projects and structures business plans to ensure EB-5 compliance. Each EB-5 investment creates 10 jobs—directly or indirectly—and helps stimulate local economies. It is this job creation that helps to stimulate the economy.

While EB-5 investors are not employed by the projects in which they invest, the EB-5 regional center’s projects are helping to stimulate the economy. A growing economy leads to increased hiring in general and increased hiring creates a more promising job market for graduating students and international students.

Advantages of the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program

The U.S. immigrant investor program is the most flexible in the world. It sets no requirements based on age, business training and experience, or language skills. Additionally, Permanent Residents need not be continuously and physically present in the United States during the program and can even maintain business and professional relations in their country of origin.

The U.S. immigrant investor program also allows investors a great deal of freedom because it does not require immigrant investors to manage their investment on a daily basis, but rather, to ‘actively engage’ in a business enterprise, meaning they can be limited partners and pursue other professional or personal ventures.

Moreover, should the investor and his or her family elect to become U.S. citizens, the time spent as conditional permanent residents is credited towards the five year lawful permanent residency requirement for U.S. citizenship. As a permanent resident, the investor and his or her family are free to return to their homeland for visits or business purposes, as long as a residence is maintained in the United States.

The EB-5 Visa program also offers the following benefits:

• Direct route to permanent residency in the United States for Investor, his/her spouse, and any children under the age of 21

• Freedom for Investor and family to live, work, and retire anywhere in the United States

• Investor and his/her spouse and children may attend college or university at U.S. resident costs

• Investor and immediate family may travel to and from the United States without a visa

• Route to U.S. citizenship for Investor and immediate family after five years of permanent residency

• Ability for Investor to sponsor green cards for family members

• Investor receives all benefits of U.S. permanent residency status, including ability to develop and run his/her own business

Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC

EB-5 Visa Program News Blog: Chicago Convention Center

EB-5 Visa Program News Blog: Chicago Convention Center: IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Taher Kameli Phone (weekday): 312.427.0910 Phone (weekend): 312.375.6755 Email: info@chicagoeb5.com Dece...

Chicago Convention Center

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Taher Kameli

Phone (weekday): 312.427.0910

Phone (weekend): 312.375.6755

Email: info@chicagoeb5.com

December 14, 2011- Chicago, IL- Designated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on March 5, 2009, the Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC became the first approved EB-5 Pilot Program Regional Center in Chicago. The Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC is committed to creating jobs and providing services within the community.

The EB-5 Pilot Program is growing in popularity. As a result, new Regional Centers have been emerging all over the United States. There are currently 207 designated Regional Centers, each operating in different geographical areas and industries. It has become challenging to differentiate between each Regional Center and the projects that they offer. The Chicagoland area currently has at least two designated Regional Centers with proposed projects. The Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC has been contacted by several sources regarding one potential project that individuals and companies have mistakenly associated with it. A Regional Center separate and apart from the Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC is sponsoring the Chicago Convention Center project with the goal of using a large sum of EB-5 investment funds.

As is the case with all Regional Centers, each stands on its own and has a unique process for deciding which projects to undertake. The Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC is not responsible for the success or failure of any projects that are not directly sponsored by them. The Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC have never provided any consulting or advising services to any other Regional Center, nor have they ever had any contact with the Regional Center responsible for the Chicago Convention Center project. The Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC does not have a partnership, association, relationship, affiliation or agreement with any other Regional Center or their sponsored projects, including but not limited to the Chicago Convention Center.

The Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC carefully vets potential projects to make sure that only the finest business models are selected. First, the Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC targets geographical areas that have higher than average levels of unemployment. Projects are then chosen based on how many jobs will be created and whether the project will be sustainable while providing a needed service to the local community. The Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC has several fully subscribed projects that meet our strict criteria with numerous Form I-526 Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneurs approvals.

The Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC is continuing the goals it had when designated in 2009. By putting the needs of their investors first, the Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC has been able to begin the flow of desperately needed capital to new commercial enterprises that will create employment in impoverished areas within their approved geographic area. It is the hope of the Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC that they will be able to aid in the development and prosperity of the region for many years to come.

If you would like more information about this program or the Chicagoland Foreign Investment Group, LLC, please schedule an interview with Taher Kameli. Call 312.427.0910 during the week or 312.375.6755 on weekends. You may also send an e-mail to info@chicagoeb5.com

Is Our Government Authorizing Shady Middlemen to Sell Green Cards?

Is Our Government Authorizing Shady Middlemen to Sell Green Cards?

Dec 06, 2011 2:56 PM EST

Opinion By Fox News

The con man has an offer too good to resist. He, along with hundreds of others can be authorized by the federal government to manage investment money and sell green cards to foreign investors under a federal program known as the EB-5 Investor Visa.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing this week on the program but the title "Reauthorizing the EB-5 Regional Center Program: Promoting Job Creation and Economic Development in American Communities" is troubling. It indicates the Committee may simply rubber-stamp continuation of the program instead of subjecting it to a long overdue, thorough and transparent investigation of the program.

EB-5 was put into place in 1992 to spur job growth by offering green cards to foreigners in exchange for an investment of $500,000 to $1 million. Each investment is supposed to create 10 jobs. 10,000 green cards are allotted for this purpose each year.

The United States Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) has authorized 204 EB-5 regional centers, each officially defined as "any economic entity, public or private, which is involved with the promotion of economic growth, improved regional productivity, job creation and increased domestic capital investment." The centers serve as middlemen to initiate the process of reaching out to foreign investors and matching their investments with local projects.

Never mind the unseemly aspect of selling American green cards as if we're scalping hockey tickets, do the math and question whether $5 to10 billion is really going to find its way into the right places for the right reasons. Ask too, whether the federal government, or anyone in this instance, should be trusted to properly oversee the program, especially in the wake of mismanaged stimulus money and green dollars fueling a Solyndra bankruptcy scandal.

While some of the EB-5 regional centers are large and appear to be engaged in legitimate investments, upon close examination of the entire list, almost a third of the centers appear to be dubious, one-person shops with "CEOs" who have generic e-mails ending in "gmail," "hotmail" or "yahoo."

At least 43 centers do not even have a website, 11 have no contact information, and of those regional center websites that are active, many are either barely legible or not written in English. Interestingly, some of the regional centers are actually immigration attorney websites.

The large regional centers offer foreign investors a range of investment options including hotel, resort and shopping center developments. The small regional centers offer green cards in exchange for investing in everything from house foreclosures to vitamin supplements.

Feeling suspicious? Congress should be, too.

And for further intrigue, why does USCIS regard a "person residing in the United States under suspension of deportation" as an officially qualifying employee of the EB-5 program? Ten illegal aliens whose deportation has been put on hold - which is happening every day under Obama's new administrative amnesty policies - seems to perfectly satisfy the requirement to create ten jobs.

The con man's dilemma of getting the first person's money in order to entice others is potentially solved with EB-5. The initial foreign investor's infusion of cash appears to be used as a means by the "middleman" to solicit additional individuals, businesses and government municipalities to finance various, and possibly fraudulent, investment schemes.

Fraud and abuse has already happened and the conditions are ripe for more instances. One such California venture which received millions in EB-5 funding was the El Monte Transit Village project, an authorized EB-5 Regional Center.

The FBI is investigating how this project received federal, state and city money to develop 65 acres of housing, offices and stores at a cost of $1 billion. The company declared bankruptcy and the owners are being accused of fraud, embezzlement and theft. Another EB-5 regional center, Mamtek in Moberly, Missouri left the town on the hook for $39 million and the state holding another $17.6 million in debt as a result of the project going sour.

The fictional old West character Walter Scott once yelped, "There's gold in them thar hills." But he was also a con man who led people to a mine that didn't actually exist. Something is glittering that may not be gold and it's high time for Congress to investigate who the true beneficiaries are of the EB-5 program.

Better yet, Congress should shut down the program and devise a rational, skilled-based legal immigration policy. Then many of the people buying their way in with EB-5s might otherwise qualify as skilled immigrants.

Bob Dane is Communications Director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Kristen Williamson is Communications Assistant at FAIR.