National Stakeholder Engagement with Director Mayorkas

I listened in today on the National Stakeholder Engagement with Director Alejandro Mayorkas and have a few items of EB-5 interest to report:

• USCIS is actively working on a new comprehensive Policy Manual, which will eventually include a section on EB-5. The USCIS Policy Manual aims to provide a centralized online repository for USCIS’s immigration policies and will ultimately replace the Adjudicator’s Field Manual (AFM), the USCIS Immigration Policy Memoranda site, and other policy repositories. The call suggested that the manual will also include some new or at least clarified policy. So far only the section on Citizenship & Naturalization has gone online, but the concept is fantastic and I applaud the courage of those who launched this monumental task and who are still pushing it forward. I’ll be less marketable as a living EB-5 encyclopedia when the EB-5 section finally goes online, combining in one place the multifarious EB-5 guidance, and I’m okay with that. Hooray for democracy, transparency, consistency, and public information!
• I believe I heard Director Mayorkas say that a new iteration of the draft EB-5 policy memo (previous version here) will be distributed “in a week or two.”
• Director Mayorkas is still “fully engaged” in plans for the new EB-5 program office, to be located in Washington DC, and reiterated his aspirations for this office as described in the December 3 conversation with EB-5 stakeholders. He also announced that Robert Cox of the USCIS Office of Chief Counsel has been named as acting chief of the immigrant investor program during the “bridge period.”

Listening to the call, which touched on issues ranging from deferred action for childhood arrivals to H1-B visa challenges to adoption to security concerns and more, reminded me that EB-5 stakeholders are greedy fish in a very big and crowded pond. People trying to take advantage of the EB-5 category have business deals and money and family futures on the line. Sure they deserve attention — but really which person with an immigration issue doesn’t have his or her career/family/life invested in the outcome. Kudos to the USCIS adjudicators who have to work under the pressure of all these individual stories and potential for personal tragedy even as they try to administer benefits justly.