EB-5 Updates

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue? (a/k/a How To Kill Deal Flow.) Something New Generally, quarterly EB-5 Stakeholder Meetings are a regurgitation of most things old. The real benefit often lies in the USCIS’s response to the questions. Still, every once in a while, something new is thrown into the mix. In my opinion, the most shocking thing we learned from last week’s quarterly engagement was the USCIS telling the EB-5 community that they have had a policy [...]

This is Part 2 of a two-part blog post addressing the intense debate which was waged on many LinkedIn groups recently. If you are relatively new to EB-5s and need to understand the exact difference between Direct EB-5s and Regional Center EB-5s, please read Part I first. The following are my thoughts on the arguments for Direct EB-5s and against Regional Center EB-5s that were posted on the LinkedIn EB-5 groups. (Italics are from this post). 1. Argument re: Loss [...]

During the past few months, there has been a pretty intense debate raged on many of the LinkedIn EB-5 Groups regarding the benefits of Direct EB-5 vs. Regional Center EB-5s. The debate, unfortunately, took a pretty nasty turn as the proponent of Direct EB-5s tried to engage the Regional Center side by calling everyone names. Not the most productive way to begin a conversation. That said, the topic of discussion one of great interest to many prospective investors. So I [...]

“Are we there yet?” Now that the Regional Center Pilot Program has been extended for another three years, the topic of premium processing is bound to come up again. Here’s a bit of background for the new comers to the industry. Back in the day, when EB-5s were not as popular and the USCIS California Service Center was not completely overwhelmed, it used to be that I-526 petitions were often processed fairly quickly in a matter of three or four [...]

First, hope you all had a good summer! I haven’t been able to post over the summer but am now back with a bang, now that the Senate has approved the extension of the Regional Center Pilot Program for another three years. While we weren’t able to get the Regional Center Pilot Program based into the laws, I guess things could be much, much worse. As I’ve mentioned to many of you who have expressed interest in entering the EB-5 [...]

Generally, when an investor chooses a Regional Center project to invest in, she will wire her funds to the Regional Center’s escrow account. The EB-5 regulations require that funds must have been “invested” (or be in the process of investing – though no one wants to take a chance on that anymore) in a U.S. business and over the years, the USCIS has agreed that placing the investment funds in an escrow account will be sufficient to meet the investment [...]