留学生直接申请EB5成为新趋势
来源：伯乐编辑
发表时间: 16:51:26
　　留学生EB5 再获批准：F1学生如何计划投资移民申请步骤
　　11月6日，伯乐移民再次成功帮助一位中国大陆到美国攻读本科学士学位的F1留学生顺利获得移民局对其EB5投资移民 I-526的批准。 该申请于日递交， 日获得移民局批准。由于目前美国EB5对中国大陆的申请人尚无排期限制， 所以这位客户可以立刻递交 I-485， (调整身份)， I-765 (工卡) 和 I-131 (旅行文件)申请。 这位F1学生预期将在90天内获得工卡和旅行文件，并可以持工卡和旅行文件在美国自由寻找工作和进出境， 在大约4个月到6个月时间，获得美国的有条件绿卡。有条件绿卡持有者与无条件绿卡持有者享受同等的权利和利益，(包括有些大学对居民学费的减免，很多美国政府高科技研究机构对雇员要求必须具有美国绿卡和公民身份)。 不同点只是需要 获得有条件绿卡21个月时，递交取消条件申请并在获得移民局批准后获得没有条件限制的绿卡。
　　伯乐移民预计：EB5将逐渐成为帮助中国留美学生获得美国永久居留权的主要途径之一
　　伴随中国大陆经济腾飞，越来越多的&小留学生&到美国接受高中教育或攻读学士学位。 这与十年前的情况迥然不同。那时，到或者作学者的大多是已经获得学士学位、硕士学位、甚至博士学位的中青年学子。所以留学生绝大多数通过美国职业移民类别的EB1A,(职业移民第一优先杰出人才)以及 EB2NIW (职业移民第二优先国家利益豁免)。这两类美国职业移民方式不需要美国雇主支持，(美国近年来经济的衰退，许多美国雇主不再支持外国留学生申请绿卡)但是需要留学生具备发表专业文章，在专业领域有相当影响，获得重要专业奖励，等较高的证据条件。
　　而新时代绝大多数到美国读高中，读大学的留学生不可能选择EB1A和EB2NIW。 但是他们中很多人具备新的优势，即家庭经济实力。所以可以明智的运用这种经济实力获得美国永久居留权。特别是考虑到获得美国永久居留权后，可以与其他美国同学在同一条起跑线上竞争，在美国争取更好的工作机会，特别是可以在美国协助父母创业，将中国企业国际化。 这一些列事业，没有绿卡，在美国很难成就。
　　对于这类有经济实力的中国留学生来说，如何规划自己的 EB5申请呢?
　　根据目前美国移民局的审理程序，留学生在计划自己EB5申请时需要注意以下事项。
　　自己是否在过去持有J1签证进入过美国( 美国J1签证是一种非移民签证，签发给来美国参加美国国务院批准的&交流访问者计划&(Exchange-Visitor Programs)的各类外籍人士，目的是提供美国和其它国家之间的教育和文化交流的机会，以增进彼此了解，促进国际合作，发展国与国之间的友好关系。 )
　　J1签证有一个特殊的要求，对于一些持J1 到的学生，J1签证要求该持有人在完成学业或研究后，回到母国服务两年。 所以称&两年回国服务期&要求。
　　不是所有的J1持有人都有这一要求。 这项要求是否使用通常写明在J1签证页的 &Annotation& 一栏之下。 如果写明J1不受2年回国服务期限制，申请人就不必担心。因为在美国移民局批准EB5 有条件绿卡申请后，不受2年回国服务期限制的申请人，可以立刻递交 I-485申请。
　　如果写明J1受2年回国服务期限制，则要设法提前申请2年回国服务期豁免。因为这些申请人只有在获得了豁免批准后才可以依据I-526批准书递交I-485的申请。
　　自己持有的F1身份何时到期
　　目前，美国移民局审理I-526的时间比较长，大约需要12 至15个月。 如果留学生希望自己的I-526批准和I-485递交在F1身份有效期内，以便可以在美国直接申请绿卡， 那就需要计算自己的申请程序所需要的时间。
　　首先要确定自己现在持有的F1何时到期。 F1持有人在学位学习结束时，可以申请OPT。所以，比较确切的F1截止期是OPT的截止期。 如果还没有申请OPT，可以推算自己OPT申请时间和截止时间。 一般OPT 为12个月。一些STEM专业的OPT可以再延长17个月，总共29个月。如果希望在美国直接通过EB5申请绿卡，就需要给申请程序足够的提前量。
　　如果F1有效期不足以覆盖EB5申请所需时间，可以选择在中国广州领事馆申请 移民签证。 如此，申请人可以在F1/OPT到期后回中国等候I-526批准和美国驻广州领事馆面谈。
　　F1持有人递交EB5 有条件绿卡申请后不要再换学校和申请新F1及F1延期
　　F1持有人递交了 EB5 I-526 有条件绿卡申请后， 可以继续保持原有的F1身份并继续学业。而且，递交EB5申请也不影响申请OPT。 这在美国移民法中已经成为定论。 所以不必担心。
　　但是如果转换学校和申请新的F1及F1延期，则非常可能遇到移民官的质询和否决， 因为申请人已经有了移民倾向，所以不能批准一个新的F1申请。
　　如果F1持有人计划得当，在递交EB5之前完成转换学校和申请新F1的程序，则不会因为申请EB5而受到影响。
　　留学生申请EB5的一个优势是人在美国，了解英文，可以和移民律师共同了解和分析EB5区域中心项目，谨防欺诈和高风险项目。
　　伯乐移民长期以来成功申请EB5.　决定以此类职业移民申请绿卡的读者，欢迎与我们联系。
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美国投资移民条件：美国EB5投资移民办理流程
美国投资移民条件、美国EB5投资移民有哪些程序和流程
　　一.完善所有的申请材料。
　　二.投资人将投资金额汇入汇丰银行在美分行（HSBC Bank USA）的监管帐户。
　　三.将所有申请材料递交美国移民局进行审批。
　　四. 美国移民局收件后二个月内完成审批。审批通过之后，申请人将在45-60天内收到由美国务院所寄出的文件包，并须于领事馆面试日期前填妥此资料。没被批准的申请人则发还其原存放于监管账户的投资本息。
　　五.领事馆通知投资人面试日期，并要求投资人进行健康检查。总计此阶段作业约须时一至二个月。
　　六.领事馆面试，移民官当场告知投资人面试结果。
　　七.获得签证后180天内，投资人须赴美。（投资人可举家迁往美国任何所欲居住的州，享受与美国公民相等权益的新生活。未来二年中，除需维持每年有半年以上的居住时间外，投资人在此期间可自由进出美国）。
　　八.投资人于进入美国的21个月后（亦即条件式签证到期的前三个月），递交I-829申请表，请求解除条件。
　　九.投资人签证条件移除，成为正式之永久居民。
　　十.五年投资期满，投资人取回50万美元的投资金额。投资人可选择是否要成为美国公民。
　　假设：投资移民者在美国境内，投资者可以立刻申请绿卡，等待批准时间快则1个月，慢则不超过半年。如果投资者在美国境外，投资者需要到美国驻广州领馆面试，有时比在美国调整身份慢3个月，视国家与地区的不同。
　　绿卡获得批准后，投资者将得到一个条件绿卡。条件绿卡与正式绿卡享有相同的权力。条件绿卡的有效期为2年。在条件绿卡获批后的21-24个月，投资者需要重新证明投资完成，或者依旧存在，以申请取消条件绿卡变永久绿卡。从获得条件绿卡5年后，投资者可以申请美国公民。
各国使领馆
各国移民局
| 中加美康旗下网站：&& 查看话题
刚看了路透社的报道，最近22年来美国EB5投资移民成功拿到绿卡的精确数字是....
刚看了路透社的报道，根据美国移民局公布的官方数字，最近20年（）来美国的EB-5投资移民成功者的精确数字是3127人。再加上人和2012截止到6月的639人（见如下美国移民局官方链接）。
那么自EB5投资移民开始到现在这22年来成功拿到绿卡的投资移民总数是4833人。
这是包括的全球各个国家的EB5投资移民总数，如果只算中国人，恐怕还不及这个数字。
黑中介和公知们，你们被美国移民局打脸了。
美国移民局官方公布的I-829审批数字，注意右侧"I-829, Approvals"：
http://www.uscis.gov/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/Immigration%20Forms%20Data/Employment-based/I526_I829_performancedata_qtr3.pdf
路透社链接和原文：
/article//us-usa-immigration-business-idUSTRE6BL2KJ
(Reuters) - In a conference room in an office building in downtown Shanghai, Jason Lee is literally selling the American dream.
Lee runs Maslink, a firm that connects cash-hungry American businesses with Chinese investors keen to move to the United States. His company is part of a global cottage industry that has popped up in recent years to profit from a program that allows foreigners who invest in certain small U.S. businesses to get on the fast track to U.S. residency and citizenship.
Interest in the immigration program, known as EB-5, is so high that Maslink, which already has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou and Chongqing, is expanding to two more Chinese cities.
Firms like Maslink, and the U.S. companies that pay them, promote EB-5 as a quick, easy way to gain legal entry to the United States -- and to make a potential profit in the bargain.
The pitch is effective. In 2010, nearly 2,000 would-be immigrants, many from China, applied for EB-5 visas, the most ever in a single year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that oversees the program. The surge has been driven in part by a 20-fold increase in the number of U.S. companies looking to participate.
But an examination of EB-5 by Reuters suggests immigrants should think twice before investing in the limited partnerships and unregistered securities that U.S. companies and promoters like Maslink are encouraging them to buy.
Over the past two decades, thousands of immigrants have been burned by misrepresentations that EB-5 promoters make about the program, both inside and outside the United States. Many have lost not only their money but their chance at winning U.S. citizenship.
"I always tell the people who approach me that the EB-5 investment program is a risky business," said Brian Su, a Springfield, Illinois-based immigration consultant who publishes a popular blog on the program. "If you cannot bear the loss, the total loss of your investment, don't play this game."
But those risks are downplayed by almost everyone involved in the program -- including the USCIS itself. Chris Bentley, the agency's spokesman, for instance, said "the overwhelming majority" of EB-5 investors and their dependents go on to qualify for permanent resident status. An analysis of USCIS's own data, however, suggests that's not true. Nearly half the immigrant investors who won EB-5 visas during its 20-year history have failed to obtain permanent residency.
The rise in recent years of an unregulated industry paid to fill the EB-5 pipeline with rich foreigners has only added to the dangers. The U.S. businesses the immigrants are now steered to -- by firms like Maslink and by U.S. immigration attorneys -- are often the ones paying the highest commissions, not the ones offering the best investments, according to the industry insiders who spoke to Reuters.
"It's the Wild West," said Henry Liebman, a Seattle attorney and developer who has been doing EB-5 funded projects almost since the program's inception.
"You're dealing with a bunch of unregulated companies, most of them small, that aren't registered with anyone and can do whatever they want," he said. "It's definitely buyer beware."
A CHINESE WARNING
The number of U.S. businesses seeking immigrant investors through EB-5 has exploded over the past three years.
In 2007, there were just 11 specially designated businesses allowed to offer EB-5 visas to foreign investors in exc today there are 117 and 88 more are applying for the status. Many of the newcomers are commercial real-estate builders looking for alternative funding to keep their projects alive.
"As sources of domestic capital have dried up, developers have tried to scramble to find other ways to finance their projects either in whole or in part," said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an adjunct law professor at Cornell University Law School and the unofficial dean of the EB-5 bar.
As they assemble their marketing machines, some of them tap former real estate associates who, only a few years ago, were peddling interest-only, subprime and stated income loans, says Michael Gibson, who performs due-diligence on EB-5 projects for immigrants.
"We are seeing people who are coming into the market right now who are offering advice, promoting some of these centers, who a year or two ago were selling mortgage products," Gibson said. "They will tell investors almost anything they can to get them to sign the subscription agreement."
Overseas, the firms pushing the program are coming under scrutiny. In fact, China's ministry of public security issued two warnings this year about EB-5 and imposed new restrictions on the promoters.
Companies like Maslink are now supposed to get approval from Chinese authorities before hosting sales presentations. But Su says the marketers have simply moved their presentations out of public settings like hotel ballrooms and into smaller, more private settings.
"The Chinese government, they realize this EB-5 thing is risky and that a lot of the EB-5 companies are not telling the whole story," Su said.
Yet the two agencies in the United States tasked with oversight of the EB-5 program -- USCIS and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) -- told Reuters they are unaware of any marketing abuses in the program.
To date, only one of the U.S. businesses -- known as "regional centers" in USCIS parlance -- has been decertified despite evidence that many are endangering the immigration status of their investors by violating basic program rules.
Over two months this fall, Reuters reporters in the United States, China and Korea attended EB-5 sales presentations and interviewed dozens of people associated with the program -- from officials at the U.S. agencies that monitor it to the immigrants who have used it, from the attorneys that steer immigrants into specific investments to the U.S. businesses that pay them to do so.
The picture that emerged was troubling. The examination found widespread problems in the way the program is promoted. Some marketers, for instance, imply or claim outright that the investments they're selling are insured or government backed and that the EB-5 immigrants who invest in them are guaranteed permanent green cards. Neither is ever true.
An analysis of recent rulings by USCIS's appeals office, meanwhile, found that a growing number of the U.S. businesses in the program are inadvertently torpedoing the residency applications of their investors by changing their projects in material ways without first obtaining USCIS approval.
Unfortunately, these missteps often come to light years into the immigrants' residency in the United States, when they petition to have the conditions on their green cards lifted and are denied.
"The problem is that by that time, they've got their house, the kids are in school, they're friends with the neighbors, their lives are here," said Jose Latour, a former State Department official who practices immigration law in Florida. "And through no fault of theirs, the rug is being pulled out from under them. There is nothing sadder than to see a family that followed the rules and did everything right and then loses because of a third party failing to reach their end of the deal."
In sum, the examination found the EB-5 program is anything but an easy and certain path for wealthy foreigners to get into the United States and stay here. It's a lesson that thousands have learned the hard way over the past two decades and one that experts warn many more will learn in the years ahead. "If they make a bad investment choice and they end up facing removal, it's disastrous," said Gibson.
"There is no appeal to this denial -- it's a huge burden for someone who has picked up their roots to come to the U.S."
PROMISES, PROMISES
The U.S. businesses that have flocked to the program in recent years include companies hoping to buy vineyards in California, build gas stations in Guam and turn around troubled dairy farms in South Dakota.
In 2010, Chinese citizens were issued the most EB-5 visas, at 772, followed by South Korea with 295, Britain with 135, Taiwan with 94 and India with 62.
On the day Reuters spoke with Lee in Shanghai, he was selling an investment in an Idaho gold mine that has been closed for decades but which a U.S. business now wants to reopen.
About 20 people showed up to hear his pitch. Lend $500,000 to the mine today, Lee said, and you and your family can move anywhere you want in the United States tomorrow. In two years, you may become permanent U.S. residents with a clear path to citizenship. Three years after that, the mine will repay the loan with 500 ounces of gold -- worth about $650,000 at the time of Lee's mid-November presentation.
That last promise -- repeated in a brochure in Mandarin, which claims the project is the first to have a 100 percent money-back guarantee should the mine fail -- violates a fundamental EB-5 rule. Investments made through the program must be at risk from start to finish. "The immigrant investor's investment cannot be guaranteed," said Bentley, the USCIS spokesman.
In an e-mail response to a series of questions from Reuters, Sima Muroff, the head of the Idaho company, which does business as the Idaho State Regional Center, denied immigrants were being offered guarantees of any kind. "There is no guaranteed buyback or redemption being promised to investors," Muroff wrote.
Muroff also insisted his company did not have a registered agent working for it in Shanghai, though Lee claimed Maslink was connected to Westlead Capital, the Idaho company's Asia liaison.
But Lee's claim is essentially repeated on the Idaho State Regional Center's website, which touts the "safety" of the investments it's selling and promises the business "will be further backing each investor through an underwritten financial strategy."
It's not alone in making such claims. America's Center for Foreign Investment, a business that is trying to get funding to build hybrid cars in the southern United States, claims on its website it has "the industry's best exit strategy: An opportunity to exchange the $500,000 investment for $650,000 worth of publicly traded shares at the fifth anniversary of the investment."
The center's head, a former immigration agency official named James DeBates, was in China promoting the venture when Reuters called for comment, according to a receptionist.
But the company's general counsel, Boyd Campbell, told Reuters "there's no guarantees in life, period" and denied the "opportunity" advertised on the website was an assured payout.
"We're talking about shares of stock," he said. "As you know, shares of stock can go up and they can go down. It may appear to be (a guarantee). But it's not."
Gibson and many others say the claims only get more inflated overseas.
"These investors are coming to the United Sates and telling us, or their attorneys, that they were given guarantees that their investment was safe and that they would create jobs," he said. He calls the representations "untrue."
Liebman acknowledges the problem. He says he tells the overseas migration consultants he uses that he wants to "review all advertisements before they go out." He also says he goes over what "they can and cannot say" in sales pitches to stay on the right side of the law. But he said: "At the end of the day, you don't know what they said."
WHERE'S THE SEC?
Because it is a hybrid program, involving issues of both immigration and investment, oversight of the EB-5 program is theoretically shared by USCIS and the SEC.
Reuters found that, in practice, the immigration agency devotes no manpower to monitoring the marketing or success or failure of the investments the U.S. businesses sell under the program. The only thing it checks is that the U.S. businesses receiving the money create the jobs they promise.
"USCIS does not police the Regional Centers domestic or international marketing," Bentley, the agency's chief spokesman, told Reuters.
That, theoretically, leaves the SEC. But most of the investments are structured in a way that exempts them from the registration and reporting requirements of U.S. securities laws.
As a result, John Nester, chief spokesman for the SEC, says his agency has "no mechanism" for monitoring the marketplace. He said a search of the SEC's database using terms like "EB-5," "regional center," "immigration and visa resource center" and "immigrant investor program" turned up no past or ongoing enforcement actions or investigations.
That lack of oversight creates a surveillance and enforcement void, where promises to immigrants that either violate the basic rules of the EB-5 program or misrepresent the nature of the investment or its risks go undetected.
Just last month, USCIS implemented a new annual reporting requirement for businesses participating in the program. The agency says the change will increase transparency by requiring them to disclose how much immigrant money they take in each year and how successful their foreign investors are in winning permanent green cards.
But the annual filing -- known as an I-924A -- does not require the businesses to disclose how they market the EB-5 program, how the investments they sell to the immigrants perform as investments or how much they are paying recruiters and attorneys in finders' fees.
"There's a sort of common sense element missing from the EB-5 process," said Latour, the former State Department official and immigration attorney. "If the SEC got involved there would be a lot of enforcement issues going on."
The details of the sales pitch that firms like Maslink make to potential investors overseas change, of course, depending on what U.S. business they're representing on a given day.
The closer remains the same: Make an investment in Company X today, they say, and you and your immediate family can move to the United States tomorrow.
It sounds too good to be true. Yet the deal, at least in broad outline, is bona fide, the result of a change to U.S. immigration law made during the recession of 1990 to create jobs and lure rich immigrants to the country.
Since then, 10,000 special visas, known as EB-5s, have been set aside annually for foreign entrepreneurs, and their immediate family, who agree to invest as little as $500,000 in ventures that will either create or save 10 U.S. jobs within two years of their arrival.
Originally, the immigrants were on their own. But in 1992, the EB-5 program was tweaked, ostensibly to make it more investor-friendly, and private U.S. companies were permitted to get into the act and directly solicit money from the investors.
The 1992 change has never been made permanent but has been successively extended for 18 years now. It is scheduled to sunset in 2012, but a number of powerful lawmakers, including Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, are working hard to extend it again.
Although EB-5 was criticized from the start as a citizenship-for-sale scheme, supporters, including Yale-Loehr of Cornell, insist the program, including the 1992 change, is good for the country on many levels.
"No. 1, it's a win for the U.S. businesses that might not be able to finish a project but for foreign financing," he said.
"No. 2, it's a win for the foreign investor, obviously, because they get a green card out of it. No. 3, it's a win for the U.S. taxpayer because they are seeing the benefits of an increase in economic activity at no expense ... and No. 4 it's a win for U.S. workers because jobs are being created."
A ROCKY HISTORY
Yet for most of its history, the EB-5 program has been a disappointment and an embarrassment.
Its backers hoped it would attract at least 2,500 immigrant investors a year. But during its first two decades, it attracted, on average, only about 400 foreign entrepreneurs a year.
The little publicity it did get was frequently negative, which probably discouraged many foreigners from participating in it.
In the late 1990s, the program was temporarily halted, and hundreds of immigrant investors were thrown into legal limbo amid allegations the legal department of the U.S. immigration agency -- then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) -- had ruled in EB-5 matters in ways that were preferential to a business called AIS, which had been set up by former INS insiders.
No one in AIS or the INS was ever formally charged in the affair. But the probe effectively sabotaged the residency applications of hundreds of immigrant investors and hundreds more of their family members, some of whom - 11 years later - remain in limbo.
Two years after AIS, the operators of a company called Interbank Group were convicted of dozens of counts of visa, mail and wire fraud in a scheme that targeted EB-5 investors. Two of the company's operators went to jail. But hundreds of the immigrants they lured to this country wound up having their permanent residency applications denied.
"A lot of people got burned," said Latour.
And just last year, four Koreans who invested in a South Dakota dairy farm through EB-5, lost their entire investment when the price of milk collapsed and the operators of the farm stopped paying the mortgage.
When the four, who had invested a total of $2 million in the dairy, tried to step in and save the venture, they discovered their partner had left their names off the title. When they tried to sue in state court, the case went nowhere.
QUICK AND EASY?
One of the most common claims promoters make about EB-5 is that the program is a quick and certain way to get a permanent green card. USCIS data contradicts that rosy picture.
In all, 13,719 immigrant investors have applied to participate in the EB-5 program since 1990, according to USCIS.
But 4,489 of the applicants were rejected outright for any number of reasons, including an inability to prove to the government's satisfaction that the funds they proposed to invest came from legal sources. Another 848 are still pending.
Of the 8,382 immigrant investors who were allowed into the program and granted conditional visas over the years, 5,748 have theoretically been in the country long enough to apply for unconditional green cards -- the permanent resident status that represents the finish line.
So how many have actually reached that milestone during the past 20 years? Just 3,127 investors. The other 2,621 have either had their applications for permanent residency rejected, fallen into some sort of legal limbo or just given up and gone back home with their families in tow and their dreams broken.
In other words, only 54 percent of the immigrants who start the process of gaining permanent residency using the EB-5 program actually attain it. That's a coin toss, not a slam dunk. Yet the businesses marketing the program promote it as a sure thing.
At a recent seminar in Seoul, an agent for the Kookmin Migration Consulting Co., working on behalf of the New York City Regional Center, told would-be investors if they invested in the company's latest project their permanent green cards were "guaranteed." He also implied the investors would be financing the construction of the new home for the New Jersey Nets NBA basketball team.
In a subsequent interview with Reuters, George Olsen, managing principal of the New York City Regional Center acknowledged the claims were "not accurate" - the investors will finance the rebuilding of a rail yard and some related infrastructure near the new basketball court -- and promised he would jump on Kookmin "with two feet."
"But that's what's frustrating," Olsen said. "You can't be at every seminar, you can't be at every meeting, you can't be in the room when one of these people is talking. To raise $100 million, you have to get 200 investors. That's a lot of people. So there's a certain amount of mass marketing that has to go on. And once you get into that realm, it's hard to control."
THANK YOU, GOVERNOR
In their presentations abroad, many EB-5 businesses also emphasize the role USCIS played in their designation, implying a level of government vetting and support that anyone would find reassuring.
The agent from Kookmin, for instance, said during the Seoul sales presentation that the government of New York state was involved in the rail yard project. Olsen said that claim was inaccurate as well.
But such claims get made over and over again -- especially outside the United States.
In a move that seems designed to further confuse would-be investors, centers in South Dakota, Vermont and Idaho, among others, have even brought elected officials along on their overseas sales pitches. Gibson calls the practice "a serious concern."
Still, the visits by high-profile politicians, including sitting state governors, continues, encouraged by the overseas promoters.
"We ask them to invite their government officials," said Hong Yu, a project manager based in Florida for the Wailian Overseas Consulting Group, which, like Maslink, works to find investors for the program. "That's very important ... to the Chinese people. Chinese people think, 'OK that project is government supported.' ... It feels safer."
But the impression is utterly false. Bentley, the USCIS spokesman, is unequivocal on the point: Just because a business has been designated as an approved EB-5 investment "does not mean that the projects are government-backed or guaranteed."
DOUBLE DIPPING
Another big problem with the program: The attorneys the immigrants rely on as they navigate the EB-5 maze in the United States are often deeply conflicted, accepting commissions from the businesses they steer the immigrants to. It's a practice the lawyers do not always disclose and one that may violate U.S. securities laws.
In May, the SEC published something called a denial of no-action letter in response to a request it received from a Virginia law firm known as Brumberg, Mackey & Wall.
In a nutshell, the SEC made it clear that attorneys cannot help effect transactions in securities -- and be compensated for it -- unless they are also registered broker dealers. The case was not an EB-5 case, but its relevance to the program is crystal clear.
"That caused a lot of alarm," said Latour because most of the lawyers accepting commissions from EB-5 businesses are not registered broker dealers. Still, the practice is widespread and businesses acknowledge they pay the commissions.
"There's about a half dozen or so attorneys that do a significant amount of EB-5 work and don't take referral fees," said Liebman.
"The other God-knows-how-many attorneys out there, do take the referral fees. Now, we insist that they disclose that they took it. We tell them they shouldn't take it. And if it does go wrong, that it's not a waivable conflict."
In an effort to clean up the business and head off increased regulation by the government, several dozen businesses that accept investors through the program have started a Chicago-based trade group called the Association to Invest in the USA (IIUSA).
One of its first orders of business has been to educate attorneys about the risks the finder's fees entail. These include not just potential SEC action but possible malpractice suits if immigrant clients watch their investment sour.
"There are entrepreneurial attorneys out there who, I suppose, found a way to rationalize the activity," said David Andersson, an immigration attorney and regional center owner who acts as the trade group's president. "Maybe they disclosed it to their clients. Maybe they didn't ... We certainly took it on as an issue of education."
MATERIAL CHANGES
What concerns IIUSA more, he says, is the danger that one of the new centers will misinterpret the program's rules and put immigrants in jeopardy. "This is our worst nightmare," Andersson said.
An examination of recent decisions handed down by USCIS's administrative appeals office suggests the nightmare is already happening. Dozens of EB-5 immigrants have had their final residency applications denied because the businesses they invested in deviated from the plans filed with USCIS. These are the plans the immigrants must cite when they first apply for their conditional green card, using a form known as an I-526.
And it isn't just businesses new to the program that are making mistakes, the analysis shows.
In a case earlier this year, an immigrant had invested in a partnership run by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation and CanAm Enterprises, one of the biggest and oldest EB-5 companies. The partnership originally loaned money to a building materials company, which planned to use the funds to expand its warehouse and hire new workers.
But the downturn in the U.S. housing market stopped that expansion in its tracks, and the building materials company returned the loan. So the partnership, by unanimous resolution, decided to loan the money to a developer building an upscale steakhouse, which opened a few months later.
From a business perspective, it was a perfectly reasonable change of tack. But the switch jeopardized the applications of the immigrants who invested in the partnership. When one of them applied to get his permanent green card in 2008, USCIS denied the petition. When he appealed, USCIS's administrative appeals office ruled against him.
Over the past year and a half, there has been a raft of such adverse "material change" rulings against immigrants. In some cases, the businesses insist they informally communicated the changes to USCIS personnel, who told them not to worry about them. The USCIS has rejected their appeals, saying: "the opinion of a single USCIS official is not binding and no USCIS officer has the authority to pre-adjudicate an immigrant-investor petition."
To Ira Kurzban, an immigration attorney who has been representing hundreds of immigrants stranded by the crackdown on the EB-5 program in the late 1990s, it's deja vu.
"The agency has a short memory," he said. "They've taken the position that if it's quote a new material change, you have to file a new I-526 petition, which is ridiculous. And they're applying it retroactively."
The repercussions are borne entirely by the immigrants, not by the EB-5 businesses that make the error. In fact, during the 20-year life of the program, only one regional center has been stripped of its designation. That was earlier this year, when the Victorville Regional Center in California was kicked out of the program because it "could not demonstrate that they had any viable capital investment projects to offer to EB-5 investors that comply with the EB-5 job creation requirements," according to Bentley.
By the time the USCIS acted, however, Victorville had signed up three foreign investors, according to Bentley. They will now have their conditional green cards revoked and will either have to start the process again or leave the country.
With the U.S. economy limping along and the unemployment rate stubbornly high, experts worry many of the new EB-5 projects will fall short of the program's strict job creation requirements, which have to be met within the first two years of the immigrant's residency here. As a result, many more of the immigrants will be forced to pack up their families and go back home.
'TOO LATE TO GO BACK'
For the Victorville three, the letdown came early in the process. More often it comes years into the immigrants' U.S. stay, when they petition to have the conditions on their green cards lifted and are denied as a result of actions others have taken.
That's what happened to Kyung Kim, a former executive with a Korean reinsurance company who came to the United States with his wife and two children in 1997 through the EB-5 program.
Kim invested with AIS, the company formed by former INS officials that helped troubled textile mills keep their doors open. But shortly after he got in, AIS's luck with the INS ran out.
The company had been structuring its EB-5 deals creatively, requiring its foreign investors to put up only $125,000 in cash -- not the $500,000 originally required under the law -- and taking the other $375,000 in the form of a promissory note, which it would routinely forgive once the immigrant's permanent residency application was approved.
It was an arrangement the legal office of the INS had signed off on again and again. But when the agency abruptly changed its mind following an internal probe, concluding the promissory notes were an impermissible guarantee, only the immigrants suffered.
The INS went back and rejected hundreds of the applications it had previously approved. In a number of other cases, including Kim's, the agency simply sat on their applications for permanent residency -- refusing to either approve or deny them, according to Kurzban.
He says the plight of the two groups reflects a basic hostility to the EB-5 program inside USCIS itself. "The issue is that there are people within the agency who don't like the EB-5 program and they are doing whatever they can to subvert it," he said.
Bentley at USCIS called the accusation "false." He said drafting regulations to deal with the immigrants stranded by the AIS debacle was "a USCIS priority" though he acknowledged "we recognize it has been pending in years prior."
For the past 11 years, Kurzban has been fighting the agency on behalf of several hundred EB-5 investors and their families. Because of attrition, he estimates about 100 of the immigrant investors and perhaps 300 of their family members remain in legal limbo. Most of the rest have given up and gone home.
He's won a few rounds along the way, including an appeals court ruling that called the immigration agency's change of heart over AIS illegally retroactive. But the agency continues to litigate and Kurzban fears it may only be a matter of time before he's "fighting 100 deportation proceedings."
To complicate the issue, in 2002, the U.S. Congress intervened in the AIS case, ordering the INS -- now USCIS -- to come up with an equitable way for the AIS investors to become legal. The lawmakers gave the agency 120 days to come up with a plan. Eight years later, it has yet to do so.
Kurzban cites the agency's delay as further evidence of the hostility to the EB-5 program inside an agency that immigrants rely on to be fair and impartial arbiter of their cases.
"Whether they resent it because these are quote rich people, or they resent it because nobody can buy their way into the country, whatever it is, the reality is they're ignoring what the Congress has mandated," he said.
In 2003, Kim went into business for himself, buying a specialty grocery store. Last year, despite the uncertainty he faces, he bought an adjacent liquor store. In all, he employs 18 workers, nearly double what he promised when he came to this country 13 years ago.
"It's miserable and frustrating," he said of his protracted battle. Horror stories like his have spread back home to South Korea and interest in the program in that country, once the No. 1 source of EB-5 investors, has waned. The Chinese -- at least for now -- have more than taken up the slack.
But Latour and others worry the Chinese authorities are losing patience with the EB-5 promoters and that a crackdown may be looming, one that would effectively kill the program.
"The government is really starting to get very upset with it," he said. "And when China closes its door, everyone is going to follow suit."
For now, Chinese interest in the program remains high. So Lee, Maslink's CEO, says he expects he will be selling the program to strangers in a conference room somewhere in China come February, when his wife, an Australian, gives birth back home.
"I have no choice," he said. "Business is so good." (Reporting by James B. Kelleher and Karin Matz in Chicago and Melanie Lee in Shanghai, Yeojung Chang in Seoul and Angela Moon in New Y Editing by Jim Impoco and Claudia Parsons)
/article//us-usa-immigration-business-idUSTRE6BL2KJ
沙发，表示好少啊 中介说的数字是多少？
EB5 很难。 可以很快拿到临时美国拘留证，但是绿卡，不但要前期投资，还要证明，在投资后，连续n年，创造n个就业的机会，才可以拿到正式的绿卡。
这个就不是拿钱出来，这么简单了。 公知本来就不是褒义词&&现在做空中国的人太多了&&哪有那么简单&&要是有个几千万上亿都能很舒服的出去了&&现在早不是这个样了 等九大常委都移民美国就好了。。。:D 最好还统计一下加拿大澳大利亚新西兰等地，至少我身边二代不少。有一次参加他们的聚会，说了一句以后可能会回国发展，结果一桌子人笑的前仰后合的…… 现在出国的人多，回国的更多
var cpro_id = 'u1216994';
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