9/9 EB-5 Stakeholder Non-Engagement
September 9, 2019 4 Comments
In today’s EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Listening Session:
- IPO Chief Sarah Kendall made a statement that sounded promising in outline (IPO Overview, IPO updates, and comments on implementation of the proposed rule) but that proved insubstantial and unhelpful in fact. The statement was in very general terms, with no specific answers to the specific questions that I at least submitted in advance. Even the single data point — that IPO has 212 dedicated staff as of July 2019 — was unhelpful as Kendall never specified whether these staff are actually working on EB-5, or among those on “temporary assignment to other agency priorities.” The statement then wasted time by regurgitating what’s written in the regulation without telling us anything specific about how IPO interprets or plans to implement the regulation. This ungenerous statement will eventually get posted online. (UPDATE: here it is.)
- Stakeholders, having been invited before the call to submit written questions that USCIS chose not to answer, were then further invited to press *1 and ask questions live for USCIS to not answer. I do not understand what this was supposed to accomplish. Why have a call at all, if it’s to be like this? The only reason to have a live engagement, instead of just soliciting email input, is if there’s going to be any engagement. There was zero engagement in this call.
USCIS said so little that I must resort to analyzing what was not said. If USCIS had any hope of turning around the catastrophically long and continually worsening processing times, which must have occupied at least half the advance questions, wouldn’t they have expressed such hope or at least intent? If USCIS knew how they would implement the priority date retention and TEA designation process in the new regs (likely the other half of advance questions) wouldn’t they have said something helpful on these topics? But the call offered no such support or encouragement.
Here is my recording of the call. I do not recommend it.
EB-5 Updates 
Agree 100% Suzanne! Not satisfying at all…even with very low expectations!
I kept expecting an answer to the live questions…not just a “thank you for participating…next caller please”! Not the callers fault, but poor Anna Bell (sp) from Asia had the echo going on both calls so I couldn’t understand everything she said. The one gentleman had a hard time enunciating his words so I didn’t understand his questions even on the second time around.
Regarding the delays in processing, it sounded like they diverted considerable resources to higher priority areas and EB-5 isn’t one of them.
Annabelle is from EB5 Association of Investors. Maybe you can refer to this twitter to get some of her ideas: https://twitter.com/Eb5Ai
That meeting was pure entertainment. Sarah lived up to the expectations. Yes we like questions but cant answer anything right now.
Bella is from EB5AI , She gave three good questions to USCIS,we eb5 investors hope USCIS can gave us a clear answer.
Firstly, if the investor’s fund of I526 has been approved, can it be placed in escrow account after the employment target of a project has been completed, waiting for the backlog,without affecting the qualifications of the investor to obtain the conditional green card?
Secondly, may we require the uscis to pre-review he I-829 job creation of the investors stuck in backlog? For example, we should examine the amount of job creation of investors in terms of projects, instead of waiting for investors to apply for I-829 to review their job creation.
Third. Strengthen information disclosure and disclose the number of backlog in different countries and regions in real time, including the number of investors, principal applicants and family members who have been approved or not, and the number of backloged investors in priority days.
please join us EB5AI.
For every EB5 investors, For the Hope!