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March 24, 2012
High-paying, scandal-plagued immigration racket
New York Post
If you have the bucks and the right investment project that will create jobs, you can become a permanent resident of the United States. At least, that's the idea behind the EB-5 visa category. Foreign nationals with $500,000 to spend on a project here can gain entrance to the US and apply for a green card, along with their spouses and children (under age 21), as long as they invest in something that will create at least 10 full-time, continuing jobs.
Trouble is that the program is an abyssmal mess. Bloomberg News has a report highlighting cases of investors who came here expecting to be able to stay but are facing deportation because their investments went sour, they got taken for a ride and have lost their money and their legal right to be here.
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"Some claims about job generation are dubious, said Michael Gibson, a Tampa-based investment adviser who vets EB-5 deals for foreigners. When a project “substitutes EB-5 capital for more expensive bank financing or bond funding or even equity,” he said, “that isn’t really creating new economic activity. It’s margin for the developer.”
Just look at the new Brooklyn arena for the New Jersey Nets. "The Atlantic Yards developer, Forest City Ratner Cos., is borrowing $228 million in EB-5 money for a $1.4 billion infrastructure and arena fund that’s paying for a new subway entrance, parking facilities, municipal water and sewer line upgrades and other work in the vicinity of Barclays Center, according to Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for the company." But the foreign investors are claiming responsbility for all of the supposedly 8,000 permanent jobs that Atlantic Yards will create.
Posted by steve at March 24, 2012 6:21 PM