Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2010

The American Immigration Lawyer’s Association has posted a section-by-section summary of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2010 (S. 3932), introduced by Senator Menendez (D-NJ) and Senator Leahy (D-VT) on 9/29/10. This act proposes significant changes to the EB-5 program (see pages 43-45 and 52 of the PDF), which I summarize as follows:

• The “permanent partner” of an alien entrepreneur would have the same rights as a spouse.
• The fee to apply for regional center designation would be $2500.
• Investors could pay a $2500 fee to guarantee visa processing within 60 days. The creation of a premium processing program for EB-5 would be authorized.
• An adjustment application could be submitted concurrently with a visa petition (??).
• The definition of “Targeted Employment Area” would be expanded beyond high-unemployment and rural areas to cover areas of population decrease, areas designated in connection with government economic incentive programs, and State-designated TEA areas.
• Investors could extend by two years the time for filing an I-829. (This would provide a possible total 4.5 years for the investment to succeed and create jobs.)
• Investment could create full time OR “full-time equivalent” jobs (which would allow adding up hours worked by part time employees).

I must say I’m not impressed with the EB-5 portion of this legislation. It includes some attractive but probably unapprovable proposals (premium processing and broad TEA definition for example) while omitting (so far as I can find) the single most important EB-5 issue: making the regional center program permanent, or at least extending it beyond the current sunset in 2012.