8/13 Meeting Recording, GAO Report

In case you missed today’s EB-5 stakeholder meeting, here is a link to my recording. The recording sound quality is not my fault; that’s how it sounded on the phone too. (Also, Peng & Weber have typed up a transcript of part of the meeting.) UPDATE: USCIS has posted opening statements.

Here is a link to the Government Accountability Office’s newly-released report “Immigrant Investor Program: Additional Actions Needed to Better Assess Fraud Risks and Report Economic Benefits” (August 2015).

Both the meeting and the report give an interesting look into details of actions already taken to protect and improve EB-5 program integrity. Congress may be busy vacationing and not passing bills, but agencies are still making change happen. The meeting did not reveal much about the draft policy memo, except to show that USCIS is as much at sea as everyone else when it comes to the practicalities of applying an investment requirement that’s divorced from job creation, and thus divorced from the governing logic of the EB-5 program and existing guidance for the parameters of acceptable EB-5 investment. Apparently USCIS plans to add more detail and clarification to the final memo, but hasn’t yet figured out how to clarify the sustainment issue. Stakeholders were repeatedly invited to submit their suggestions. The GAO report is worth reading, being well researched and much more serious and thoughtful than the narrowly political and personal-grievance-fueled March 2015 OIG report.