Washington updates, articles, RC list updates
April 4, 2017 6 Comments
Washington Updates
- Legislation: Another piece of EB-5 legislation has been thrown into the ring – this one from Rand Paul: S.727 Invest in Our Communities Act. Dianne Feinstein made an extreme bargaining statement with S.232, which threatens to eliminate the EB-5 program entirely, and Rand Paul’s bill takes the opposite pole – offering to make the regional center program permanent with more visas for everyone, better processing times, more investor protections, reasonably limited integrity measures, and no changes to the investment amount or Targeted Employment Area incentive. I’ve entered S.727 in my bill comparison chart, but I guess it lacks sufficient compromise to gain traction (and the similar S.2122 from Mr. Paul in 2015 didn’t go anywhere) . I can’t guess what will happen between now and April 28, but am following what The Hill has to say about prospects for a continuing resolution or omnibus spending bill. UPDATE: An April 6, 2017 letter from Senators/Representatives Grassley, Leahy, Conyers, Goodlatte, and Feinstein encourages Congressional leadership not to extend the RC program on April 28 unless accompanied by reforms. (Then why don’t any of these people introduce reform legislation??)
- Regulations: Recall the April 11 deadline if you want to comment on USCIS proposed EB-5 regulations USCIS 2016-0006 and USCIS-2016-0008. So far, 0006 (with proposed TEA and investment amount changes) has 54 comments and 0008 (the advance notice requesting feedback on regional center designation issues) just 11 comments.
Other Resources
- Wolfsdorf Rosenthal and EB-5 Insights have posts about a new kind of source of funds RFE that requests SOF evidence for people transfering funds on behalf of an EB-5 investor.
- Carolyn Lee discusses the newly-unveiled regional center compliance audit program.
- A journalist called to ask me for the story behind the surge of regional center terminations in 2015 and 2016. In case anyone else is interested in this topic, here are the sources I sent him.
RC List
Additions to the USCIS Regional Center List, 03/01/2017 to 04/03/2017:
- Coastline Regional Center (Washington)
- Extell Utah Regional Center (Utah): eb5extell.com
- Mainsail Florida Regional Center (Florida)
Removed from the list of terminated RCs, and restored to the list of approved RCs:
- South Dakota International Business Institute (SDIBI) (South Dakota)
New Terminations:
- San Gabriel Valley Regional Center (California) Terminated 3/15/2017
- Washington Center for Foreign Investment, LLC (Maryland) Terminated 3/28/2017
By the way I work hard to keep my blog Regional Center List complete and consistent with information from USCIS, but the task is not easy and I welcome regional centers to correct my information.
EB-5 Updates 
Suzanne, great (ongoing) work. Continuing thanks for all the energy you put into your reportage and keeping the industry apprised of whassup in EB-5. Just FYI, the Securities Roundtable will be filing group comments on 0008 with USCIS today or tomorrow. That should help add some heft (substance and quantity) to the industry’s responses to the proposed regs on Regional Center designations.
Good news! I’ll look forward to reading your comments.
Hi Suzanne, thanks for compiling the bill comparison chart! What’s your view on the possible increase of visa numbers for the EB-5 program? If changes were to happen before April 28th, do you think there’ll be positive changes to solve the long wait time for China born investors?
I hear that increasing visa numbers is politically extremely difficult so I am not optimistic on this point. But the EB-5 industry is trying its best to lobby this important issue.
Suzanne, in your opinion, what would be a realistic timeline for China born investors who have a priority date in late 2015? Thanks.
I don’t have any sure estimate. This spreadsheet has some of the factors that could help you try to calculate this: https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=USCIS-2016-0006