Regulations Update (Spring 2019)

The Spring 2019 OMB Unified Agenda has been published with updated timetables for three EB-5 regulations in progress.

• RIN1615-AC07 EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Modernization, with proposed changes to TEAs and the minimum investment amount:
  • Timetable for Final Rule is May 2019 (The Fall 2018 agenda had anticipated November 2018)
• RIN 1615-AC11  Regional Center Program Regulation, with proposed changes to regional center designation requirements and process:
  • Timetable for Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is March 2020 (The Fall 2018 agenda had anticipated March 2019)
• RIN 1615-AC26 EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Realignment, which “will solicit public input on proposals that would increase monitoring and oversight, encourage investment in rural areas, redefine components of the job creation requirement, and define conditions for regional center designations and operations”
  • Timetable for Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is March 2020. (The Fall 2018 agenda had anticipated September 2019)

RIN1615-AC07 is still listed as Pending Review by the OMB before it can become a final rule. Meanwhile, a number of parties have requested to meet with OMB regarding the regs (View EO 12866 Meetings).

• 5/30/2019 meeting requested by Carmen Group Inc representing United States Immigration Fund LLC
• 5/7/2019 meeting requested by EB-5 Investment Coalition representing Related Companies and other regional centers
• 3/25/2019 meeting requested by Real Estate Roundtable; Commonwealth Strategic Partners representing IIUSA; HLP+R representing EB5 Capital; US Chamber of Commerce; Klein/Johnson Group representing Civitas Capital Group
• 3/20/2019 meeting requested by Navigators Global representing Related Companies
• 3/6/2019 meeting requested by American Life

The regional centers named have historically undertaken large EB-5 raises for projects in major cities, most remarkably Related with $1.2 billion in EB-5 raised for the Manhattan Hudson Yards project. They naturally oppose a regulation that would dramatically cut EB-5 demand with higher investment amounts and that would make urban TEAs more scarce. (To know the messages likely conveyed at the OMB meetings, see comments on the regulations submitted by Related, EB-5 Investment Coalition, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Civitas, EB5 Capital, American Life, and IIUSA).  Apparently anyone can request a EO 12866 meeting, so any interests that have another perspective can take the chance to provide additional input. But the EB-5 Modernization Regulation, at least as written in 2017, managed to threaten such a variety of interests that I’m not sure anyone exists to advocate for it to be finalized. Except people like Senator Grassley who want reform but apparently unclear about what’s actually in the regulation.

TEA set-aside proposal

This post examines the visa set-aside proposal in the industry’s most recent Letter to Judiciary Committees in Joint Support of Reform and Reauthorization of EB-5 Program.

Here’s the recommendation in the letter:

Notably, we recommend a 30% set aside of the annual visa allotment each year for investors in TEA projects, which would be split equally between Rural and Urban Distressed communities.

TEA Set-Asides

• 15% of visas for Rural
• 15% of visas for Urban Distressed
• Unused visas roll-over annually at the end of each year to general visa pool for access by all projects in the immediately following year
• The set asides apply immediately to new I-526 petitions filed after enactment, but they cannot be applied retroactively towards petitions that were pending as of the date of enactment.

Possible arguments in favor of the recommendation:

• A visa set-aside could be a genuine incentive for TEA investment because it offers something that’s of value to investors (visa fast track) and that doesn’t have the economically counter-productive effect of reducing capital available to the TEA project (as does the current monetary-discount TEA incentive)
• A visa set-aside can only be a potent incentive if new investors have a chance to benefit from it. Therefore, such set-asides must be limited to new petitioners, not available to the tens of thousands of past investors. Consider that current law (INA 203(b)(5)) has already set aside a minimum of 3,000 visas annually for TEA investment. We forget that this set-aside even exists, because it means nothing when TEA investments far exceed 3,000 annually in any case. The new TEA set-aside proposal will be no more effective than the existing one unless demand for it is limited.
• Limiting the visa set-aside to new investors would help, at least short-term, to address a major industry problem identified in the letter. “In the current marketplace, protracted EB-5 wait times have slowed inbound foreign capital to a trickle.” People who want to raise more EB-5 capital from China, Vietnam, and India need to be able to offer shorter wait times. Future prospective investors from those countries want shorter wait times too. So long as we can’t get more visas for those countries, the only option is to create a shortcut around people already waiting in line from those countries.
• The industry must appease reformers who want to incentivize investment in distressed and rural areas, but industry (as represented in this letter) does not wish to upset the status quo or disadvantage prosperous urban areas. Set-asides can be presented as a TEA incentive to help bargain down the monetary TEA incentive, while likely to have limited effect in practice.

Possible arguments against the recommendation:

• Considering the backlogs, EB-5 visa availability is a zero-sum game. Restricting 30% of visas to future investors means removing 30% from past investors still waiting on a future visa. Getting in front of the line means pushing someone else back in line. Improving visa wait times for some means worsening them for others. Supporting the set-aside recommendation for the sake of future capital raises requires betraying investors in past capital raises. This is a serious problem for regional centers and project companies. The zero-sum issue is a painful fact unless Congress/the White House agree to offer additional visa numbers to EB-5, which no one says is likely to occur. The only question is how many past investors would be harmed by set-asides, and how badly. The following is my attempt so far to reason out the impact, and I welcome thoughts from others.
  • Damage from the set-aside would vary by country.
    • The worst impact of set-asides would likely be for past investors from Vietnam and India (and South Korea, Taiwan, and Brazil if they also exceed the per-country cap). These countries can each access only 7% of total EB-5 visas annually until the China backlog dissipates – i.e. for the foreseeable future.  That means about 700 visas each. If, for example, 350 new investors from India are recruited in a year under the new set-aside categories, that could be sufficient to claim the total visas available to India. 700 available visas minus 700 visas allocated to new investors gaining priority under reserved set-asides would equal 0 visas left for past investors. 0 visas available year by year would stretch visa waits for past investors to infinity. The disaster for past investors would be less if (1) the new TEA categories are not popular and fail to attract many new investors from India or Vietnam, or (2) the new categories are so popular that excess demand creates backlogs even for new investors that would eventually depress new demand, or (3) the statute is interpreted such that past investors at least get 7% of the 7,000 generally-available visas, or such that set-aside status would only trump priority-date status after the 7,000 non-TEA limit is reached. In other words, the set-asides would not be disastrous for these past investors provided that they are ineffective for new investors.
    • Past investors from China calculate their wait times based on 10,000 total available visas minus visas claimed by the rest of the world. Their current wait time calculations already assume over 3,000 new investors a year getting priority due to nationality. If those same investors get the additional priority of TEA set-aside status, that might not change the China calculation very much. The set-aside proposal would harm past China investors if the set-asides are not popular, and new investors from other countries instead compete with China for the reduced pool of generally-available visas.
    • The visas set-aside provision would likely be neutral for investors from relatively low-volume countries (i.e. countries other than China, Vietnam, India, Brazil, and South Korea). New investors from these countries would not receive special benefit, since they already don’t face a visa wait by virtue of nationality, and past investors from these countries would not be specially harmed, since they already demand far fewer than 7,000 visas annually.
  • How many past investors would be affected? All those who are still waiting for a future visa when the set-aside proposal is passed. The industry’s letter to Congress numbers “all pending applicants in the queue” at “approximately 30,000.” This is phrased to imply that there are 30,000 total people waiting in line, though in context “all pending applicants” appears to refer specifically investors, not counting family also in line. Charles Oppenheim of Department of State estimates EB-5 applicants with petitions on file at NVC and Estimated USCIS Applicant Data (as of April 1, 2019) at 73,157 people. Looking at data from USCIS on I-526 filings by country, we can count over 40,000 people who filed I-526 but couldn’t possibly have visas yet, either due to cut-off dates or because the I-526 is still pending. That would translate into a queue with 70,000 to over 100,000 people in it depending on one’s assumptions about denials, withdrawals, and family size. The queue is 68% to 85% Chinese, by various estimates. (Here’s Oppenheim’s estimate — see especially slide 10 — and my analysis.)
• Set-asides would not even be an effective TEA incentive
  • Set-asides offer a time incentive.  They incentivize TEA investment from new investors by offering a visa wait significantly shorter than the norm. Such incentive depends on a norm of long visa waits. Therefore:
    • If the industry’s recommendations for visa backlog relief/increased visa numbers were accepted and visa waits were reduced, the potency of the set-aside incentive would be diminished accordingly.
    • If there’s no visa relief, set-asides would still only incentivize new investment from China, Vietnam, and India. Other countries that already do not expect a visa wait would not value a ticket to avoid the wait.
  • Set-asides would only incentivize new investment so long as demand for the set-asides is low. If they’re popular and attract over 1,000 investors annually, their 3,000 visas will quickly be claimed, backlogs will form, and the time advantage on which the incentive depends will disappear.

Please send me links to alternative analysis and I will post them, or add your comments. The TEA set-aside proposal has been brought forward regularly since 2016, but I still haven’t quite grasped why, in light of the above issues. EB-5 Investment Coalition and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, how about publishing justification for the TEA proposal? Current IIUSA members, did you hear about this letter before it was released to the public last week? Did you take part in crafting it or have opportunity to vote on it? I’d love to hear your perspective.

EB-5 Reform, Immigration Reform

Today, IIUSA and others published a letter to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees laying out “consensus reform concepts” recommended for new EB-5 legislation. I’m heartened to see effort toward reform and reauthorization, and saddened by the letter’s content. Ideally, a consensus will appear to balance the interests of a variety of groups. I don’t see that here. Two recommendations particularly deserve input from a broader base of stakeholders:

• Recommended investment amounts. The letter proposes $800,000 minimum for investment in a TEA, and $900,000 for investment outside a TEA – replacing the current 50% discount with a 12% discount. Competitive advantage requires that a feature be both rare and valuable. The letter offers a concession that TEAs can be more strictly defined so as to make them more rare than now, but then redefines the incentive to make TEA designation less valuable. The net result is clear for projects located in genuinely distressed areas that struggle to complete against prosperous urban areas. (I don’t see expedited processing being an effective additional incentive, considering USCIS’s likely inability to deliver such benefit, or visa set asides for reasons discussed below.) The recommended investment amounts don’t look like an attempt to compromise with interests outside big cities, and also don’t look like a compromise with reform advocates. How likely is Congress to accept a proposal that not only hardly increases but would actually lower the standard EB-5 investment amount set back in 1990? The recommended investment amounts have the advantage that they’re feasible and wouldn’t destroy the market, but are too-obviously the status quo.  Where’s the attempt to sell the recommendations to people who want to be seen voting for modernization and reform?
• Recommended visa set-asides. This is framed as an additional TEA incentive, but I am doubtful. The letter recommends setting aside 30% of visas annually for TEA investments, with the set-asides applying immediately to new I-526 filed after enactment, and not allowed to apply to petitions pending on the date of enactment. I foresee that this will act as a TEA incentive only for a short time, until the set-aside categories build up backlogs of their own. However, set-asides would allow raising new capital by taking visas from backlogged investors and offering them to new investors. The tens of thousands of people already in line for a visa would see the pool of visas available to them reduced by 30%, for the sake of having 30% of visas set aside in a special category only open to future investors. Thanks to the additional action of per-country caps, the set-asides could theoretically reduce visas available to past investors from India and Vietnam to zero (if promoters exploit the opportunity to offer all 700 annual visas available to India/Vietnam to new investors under the set-asides).  I want the EB-5 program to remain viable as much as anyone, but I don’t see how this visa set-aside proposal can possibly be an honorable option, considering the size and nature of the EB-5 backlog. To be fair, the letter also recommends visa relief. It suggests eliminating derivatives from the visa allocation, and suggests giving pending applicants the opportunity to pay $50,000 each to “re-set the program,” whatever that may mean. But since Congress has entertained the visa set-aside idea in recent years, and hasn’t expressed remote willingness to increase visa numbers in any way, one struggles to see good faith to past investors in the recommendations. Impossible benefits do little to counterbalance possible harm. And there ought to be obvious good faith to past investors, considering that the associations signing the letter represent members that benefited from over $10 billion in past EB-5 investment. (My post TEA set-aside proposal gives additional analysis.)

It may be pointless to get upset, considering the low likelihood that Congress will heed these recommendations or act on EB-5 any time soon. But why can’t we, as an industry, do better than this letter? If you’re represented by an organization that signed this letter, and you do not agree with the so-called consensus, make your voice heard in the on-going discussion.

Speaking of immigration proposals likely to be ignored, President Trump gave a speech yesterday to outline an immigration plan. In 2016, I wrote about candidate Trump’s vision “to choose immigrants based on merit, skill and proficiency,” and cribbed a chart from the New York Times that pictures visa allocation under our current system.

Yesterday’s speech enlarged on a “big, bold, beautiful” plan to reorient our immigration system so that it issues fewer visas based on “random” characteristics such as family relationship and humanitarian concerns, and more based on personal qualities, particularly economic position and potential. The plan sounds similar to the points-based system promoted by Senator Tom Cotton in the RAISE Act, though details have yet to be released.

One sentence from the President’s speech struck me particularly: “America’s immigration system should bring in people who will expand opportunity for striving, low-income Americans, not to compete with those low-income Americans.”

This sentiment could get some bi-partisan support, if anything received bi-partisan support anymore. And certainly, the EB-5 program deserves credit for already realizing this value. EB-5 can use the immigration incentive to expand opportunity in two ways: by creating jobs that are within reach of striving low-income Americans, and by providing capital for striving Americans who might otherwise not have been able to implement their business ideas.  How many small towns across the US now have their first flagged hotels thanks to local entrepreneurs matching with EB-5 investors to make the dream happen? How many local restaurant chains were able to expand their portfolios thanks to partnership with EB-5 investors? Such ventures don’t make the news, but I see them as a business plan writer working with small EB-5 projects.  They highlight an important feature of the EB-5 program: that it doesn’t only reward immigrants establishing their own businesses, but immigrants who support US citizen-owned businesses. I hope that any immigration reform debate will keep that EB-5 value in mind. Tom Cotton’s proposal, for example, though intending to reward economic contribution, would only have granted points for an immigrant’s investment in his or her own business.

Apparently the the administration’s plan has few friends and unlikely to go anywhere. But I’m interested as a citizen. What kind of immigration system would really accomplish a “Build America” goal? Here in Ogden Utah we just celebrated the sesquicentennial of a major nation-building milestone: the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. In his speech at the centennial celebration, then-transportation secretary John Volpe proudly asked “Who else but Americans could drill 10 tunnels in mountains 30 feet deep in snow? Who else but Americans could drill through miles of solid granite? Who else but Americans could have laid 10 miles of track in 12 hours?” As it happens, Americans did none of those things. There’s a railroad through the Sierra Nevadas thanks to Chinese workers.  What would have happened to America’s economic development without the incredible stamina and skill of those migrants from China, few of whom would’ve scored points in Tom Cotton’s system? Would Leland Stanford just have become less rich, having had to pay a naturalized workforce at least 30% more? Or is there a broader lesson about what builds America?