Law Extends USCIS Programs through September 2012
WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) advises its customers that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations Act of 2010, signed by the President on Oct. 28, 2009, extends the following USCIS programs until Sept. 30, 2012:
- E-Verify
- Immigrant Investor (EB-5) Pilot Program
- special immigrant visa category for non-minister religious workers
- date by which J-1 nonimmigrant exchange visitors must obtain that status in order to qualify for the “Conrad 30” program.
E-Verify, an Internet-based system operated by DHS in partnership with the Social Security Administration (SSA), allows participating employers to electronically verify the employment eligibility of their newly hired employees. More than 168,000 participating employers at nearly 640,000 worksites nationwide currently use the program. Since Oct. 1, 2009, more than 1.3 million employment verification queries have been run through the system and approximately 96.9 percent of all queries are now automatically confirmed without any need for employee action.
Under the Immigrant Investor Pilot Program, USCIS will continue to receive, process, and adjudicate all Regional Center Proposals and Forms I-526, Immigrant Petitions by Alien Entrepreneur, and Form I-485, Applications to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, affiliated with Regional Centers relying on “indirect” job creation analysis. Currently, there are more than 70 regional centers throughout the United States.
The special immigrant visa category for non-minister religious workers covers those within a religious vocation or occupation and also applies to accompanying or ‘following-to-join’ spouses and children of non-ministers. USCIS will continue to receive and process Form 1-360, Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant and Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, based on Form I-360 petitions.
Finally, USCIS will continue to adjudicate immigration benefits covered by the “Conrad 30” program. The “Conrad 30” program allows each state health department to submit a request directly to the Department of State to initiate the waiver process for a foreign medical graduate who obtained J-1 status to change or adjust to another status without the required two-year foreign residence. The law previously required the foreign medical graduate to have acquired J-1 status before Sept. 30, 2009; the law now extends the program to cover J-1 admissions before Sept. 30, 2012.
New venture capital plan aims to grow clean tech jobs
By Zachary Stahl, MontereyCountyWeekly.com
Rock Clapper hopes Bay Area clean-tech startups will move to Marina to take advantage of capital from Citizn Fund.
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Rock Clapper wants to turn green cards into green jobs in Marina. Clapper is applying to make the city a hub for a foreign national investment fund that could grow to $75 million and create 1,500 jobs. “This is an opportunity for growth in the community,” Clapper says. “Marina’s a sleeping gem.”
Clapper, a member of the Menlo Park investment group Band of Angels, is applying to make the area from Marina to Monterey a regional center under the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program. This would allow foreigners willing to put up at least $500,000 to create or preserve 10 jobs in the area to receive green cards for their immediate family. “The immigrants are very interested in a return on investment, but also interested in receiving a green card,” Clapper says.
The EB-5 program has 73 regional centers across the country, including more than 20 in California, from winery development in Napa to motion picture production in Los Angeles. Clapper’s company, Citizn Fund, would target industries including clean energy, agri-business and pharmaceuticals, giving investments and loans to new and existing Marina businesses.
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City of Dallas Regional Center program trades green cards for development capital
By RUDOLPH BUSH / The Dallas Morning News
In Dallas, like in so many parts of the country, cash for big-time development deals has all but dried up.
But City Hall thinks it has found a new money tree that backers hope will bloom, in time, with hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign investment.
After years of trips to China and other parts of the Far East, council member Ron Natinsky and city staff have crafted what they expect will be a powerful new development tool that could help fund the redevelopment of downtown and poorer areas of Dallas.
The program – known as the City of Dallas Regional Center – is a citywide adoption of a federal immigration program that trades green cards and the promise of permanent residency for investments of $500,000 or $1 million.
According to Natinsky, hundreds of investors – particularly from China but also from Mexico, South America and elsewhere – are lining up for the chance to get in.
“These are not people who are scraping together $500,000 or $1 million. These are people who have a high level of net worth,” he said.
At City Hall, there is hope that the foreign money will be targeted toward some of the city’s hardest development cases, including dilapidated downtown properties such as the Statler Hilton and 500 N. Ervay St.
But it’s also possible the money would go toward building warehouses in southern Dallas or retail centers in the north.
The investment program is complex and governed by strict federal immigration and customs rules that determine who gets in and who’s kept out. The process of clearing investors can take months.
Under the program’s rules, investors who put up $1 million can invest anywhere in Dallas. Investors who put up $500,000 must invest in areas where unemployment is 50 percent higher than the national average.
And every investor’s contribution must create at least 10 permanent jobs. So if 10 investors put up $10 million, their project has to directly or indirectly result in 100 new jobs.
In return, that money would be available to developers here at interest rates well below market – something that can make the difference between a project being viable or not.
Dallas could reap huge benefits from the program, largely because it is believed to be the first city in the country to adopt it on a citywide basis.
“We are ahead of the curve in the sense that few, if any, city governments have taken the initiative and done this,” said Karl Zavitkovsky, director of Dallas’ economic development department.
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EB-5 center OK’d: Company hopes to attract $50M in foreign funds
by Simon Shifrin, Idahobusiness.net
An Idaho company that hopes to plug the gap in financing for startups and other growing businesses in the state has won federal approval to serve as a “regional center” for foreign investment.
Invest Idaho LLC, formerly known as I-Cubed, joins the list of more than 70 centers across the country authorized to channel money from qualified foreign investors into the local economy under the EB-5 visa program.
The company plans to attract $50 million from qualified foreign investors as part of its initial phase, which will be used to set up a fund that could subsidize dozens of projects in any of Idaho’s 44 counties – bringing ideas out of university labs and startup garages, and helping small businesses test new products or markets.
“This really becomes a key – and, I think, historic – economic development milestone for all of Idaho,” said Miles Mahoney, chief executive officer. “Without capital, the great ideas die on the vine. … That’s the ‘valley of death.’ It’s a lack of seed funding. This is bringing $50 million of leverage capital into the state of Idaho.”
Rick Ritter, Invest Idaho’s chief operating officer and CEO of Idaho TechConnect, said too many good ideas in the state are getting bypassed by risk-averse banks and the angel funds and venture capital firms that are looking for massive rates of return as the economy begins to recover.
“None of those guys want to play with the kinds of folks we’re talking about,” he said. “The venture capital guys have moved upstream. Angel guys have moved upstream. It is now a worse problem than it was two years ago. That doesn’t mean we don’t have ideas. In times of economic downturn, we actually have more ideas, but less money than we had before.”
State officials have backed Invest Idaho’s efforts, with the Idaho Department of Commerce helping the company with its application to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – the federal agency that oversees the program – and providing introductions to potential investors through its foreign trade offices.
Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter has highlighted the EB-5 program as a “key element” of his effort to attract new foreign investment to Idaho as part of Project 60, his plan to grow the state’s annual gross domestic product to $60 billion from $52 billion.
“The value of U.S. residency, and being put on the fast track to citizenship, is an incredible tool to help us attract foreign investment in our Idaho businesses,” he said through a spokesman in response to the center’s creation. “We don’t want to miss this opportunity to infuse our economy with new investment that will stimulate job creation.”
The Department of Commerce says two other Idaho companies that plan to invest in resort development and tourism infrastructure are seeking regional center status. One of the companies has already submitted an application.
Invest Idaho submitted its application in March and received preliminary approval on Sept. 1, though it only confirmed the news to the Idaho Business Review last week.
The EB-5 program was launched under the Immigration Act of 1990. It offers green cards to foreign nationals who invest either $500,000 or $1 million in the United States and create at least 10 jobs within two years.
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Vermont delegation leaving for Asia
By Louis Porter, Vermont Press Bureau, TimesArgus.com
Gov. James Douglas, two other state officials and executives from Vermont businesses leave today for Asia to try and attract foreign business investors to the state.
In exchange for making an investment of $500,000 or more, foreign investors can receive green cards for the U.S., effectively in some cases jumping the line on the visa process. After two years in order to remain in the program, investors must demonstrate the projects have created ten jobs or more and meet other requirements.
Douglas said he doesn’t have a problem with the system of allowing preferential visas for investors, who have brought investment to the Jay Peak and Sugarbush ski resorts and which he hopes will put more money into Vermont firms. Overall immigration law needs to be reformed as well, in part to help farmers in Vermont and elsewhere be able to hire workers, Douglas said.
The program will help fulfill “the need to do everything we possibly can to position Vermont for recovery,” Douglas said.
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont proposed an extension of the temporary EB-5 visa program, which passed the Senate Tuesday and is on its way to President Barack Obama. Vermont has also just won permission to use the program, which had been restricted to businesses related to tourism, for other firms involved in manufacturing and other work.
“This program has become an economic engine in Vermont, and we have proven it with the creation of hundreds of jobs,” Leahy said in a statement. “I want Vermont to stay on the cutting edge in harnessing these investments for economic development throughout our state. The biggest impediment to this program is its lack of permanence.”
Taxpayers will cover the roughly $5,000-per-person cost of the trip for Douglas, two Agency of Commerce officials and two state troopers. The private business people, including officials from the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, will pay their own way on the two-week trip which will include stops in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan.
The governor arranged a previous economic development trip to China in 2007. Douglas and Commerce Secretary Kevin Dorn Tuesday did not point to any specific trade or business dealings produced by that trip, focused on building business for energy and environmental firms.
But Asia is growing in importance as a trading partner for the state, and it is important to have alliances and relationships with companies and officials there, Douglas and Dorn said.
“It is not like doing business in Vermont or in the United States,” said Dorn, who will accompany Douglas on the trip. “You don’t walk into the room and do a deal.”
A half-dozen Vermont companies that have approval or are seeking it for EB-5 investors are accompanying Douglas on the Asia trip. Another half-dozen people from the state who are interested in the possibility but are not applying – yet – to the program are also going along.
New Car Plant Coming to Alabama
by Samuel Solomon, theplainsman.com
A start-up automotive company focused on producing all eco-friendly vehicles will join top automakers such as Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai, International and Toyota in calling Alabama home.
Hybrid Kinetic “HK” Motors and Gov. Bob Riley publicized plans to build a new green-vehicle manufacturing plant in Baldwin County at a press conference last Thursday.
“It didn’t take long for Alabama to become a leader in the automotive industry,” Riley said in a press release. “Now as America and the world begin making a historic transition to a green economy, we look to make Alabama a leader in the production of next-generation, clean-tech automobiles.”
The company chose Alabama as its central manufacturing location because of its economy and quality workforce, according to the press release.
The plant is supposed to create more than 5,000 jobs.
HK Motors’ flagship engine is a 1.5-liter hybrid, which runs on gasoline, electricity and compressed natural gas, said Yung “Benjamin” Yueng, HK Motors chairman, in a press release.
“Our cutting edge multi-fuel hybrid power-train system delivers excellent performance while reducing CO2 emissions to exceed Euro-2012 and EPA guidelines,” Yueng said.
The plant location is ideal as Alabama is situated in the middle of one of the country’s largest and most abundant natural gas fields, said Frank Burt, Baldwin County Commissioner.
“We here in Alabama are really blessed with natural gas,” Burt said.
Many from the international community have contributed, Burt said.
Those working on the project include an Italian design team, as well as a engineering firm from Germany.
The majority of investors are from China, and there are others from India and Brazil.
Investors are attracted through the national governments EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa program. The program grants U.S. Permanent Residency (Green Cards) to non-citizens who invest in American businesses.
The requirement is an investment of $1 million or more in a business and the creation of full-time employment for at least 10 U.S. workers.
“China owns so much of our American dollars and credit,” Burt said. “It is a wonderful opportunity that a great number of those dollars would come back from China and be reinvested right here in Alabama and Baldwin County.”
Yeung and the HK Motors’ executive board have years of experience in and around the automotive industry.
“He’s done this before,” said Todd Stacy, press secretary for the governor’s office.
Stacy credited Yueng and his company with creating one of the largest automobile companies in China.
“We are aiming to become the premier hybrid vehicle producer in the U.S.,” said Colin Legerton, HK Motors public relations specialist.
HK Motors vehicles will focus on efficiency, safety and performance.
“It certainly is an exciting venture for Alabama and really for the whole automotive industry,” Stacey said.
Uptick in EB-5 investor visas could partly help spur South Florida economy
By Steve Gara - Miami Business and Industry Examiner, Examiner.com
I found it very interesting to see that the opportunity for foreign nationals to get a green card by way of investing here in the US, particularly in Florida is on the rise. Most of the interest in investment is in distressed real estate, properties that are located all over south florida, whether it is residential or commercial. There is a pilot program established for wealthy foreigners to get the EB-5 investor visa but they must to invest upwards of half a million dollars or more in a new or established business that leads to the creation of 10 or more full time jobs.
Until the pilot program was approved, a $1 million investment was typically required to be eligible for the EB-5 investor visa, which required investors to employ 10 workers directly. The lower investment threshold could be a significant incentive for more people to apply, attorneys say.
About 10,000 EB-5 investor visas are available annually, of them about 3,000 for the pilot program. Last year, fewer than 1,000 were issued under the relatively obscure EB-5 visa program. A move is under way in Congress to make the pilot program permanent in the aftermath of growing interest brought about by the recession.
This is good news for us locally because it jumps starts our local economy by bringing in much needed fresh capital from overseas since local sources for funds and credit still remain dry. This new influx of funds creates jobs, which in turn creates the momentum for the economy to get rolling again and could give south florida a competitive edge to emerge from the recession better off than most areas of the country.
As the debate heats up with immigration reform in the coming year, it will be interesting to see whether this program in fact gets expanded or becomes a casualty of bureaucracy.
USCIS Updates List of Immigrant Investor Regional Centers
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has recently published an updated list of Immigrant Investor Regional Centers.
Senate Adopts Leahy Amendment
WASHINGTON (Wednesday, July 8, 2009) – The Senate Wednesday adopted an amendment sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to make permanent the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Regional Center pilot program. The amendment was added to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act.
Earlier this year, Leahy secured a six-month extension of the successful EB-5 Regional Center pilot program in the Omnibus Appropriations Act. He has introduced legislation in previous Congresses to make the program permanent. Since it was first created in 1993, the pilot program has attracted millions of dollars in foreign investment in the United States, and created thousands of new domestic jobs. There are 22 Regional Centers across the country, including a successful center in Vermont, with new applications pending at the immigration agency. Unless Congress permanently extends the program, it will expire in September.
“I have fought for extensions of the program in the past, and have succeeded in keeping this valuable program alive,” said Leahy. “But this program must be made permanent if it is to achieve its potential as an economic engine in our communities. Before domestic and international entrepreneurs invest their dollars in EB-5 projects, they must have confidence that the program will exist in the future. Authorizing the program for only months or a few years at a time sends the wrong message to individuals who want to make a permanent commitment to the United States. I have always believed that this program should be a permanent part of our immigration system and I have confidence that it can play a significant role in our economic recovery.”
The Leahy second-degree amendment was added to an amendment sponsored by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to make permanent an employee verification system. Leahy and Sessions are the Chairman and Ranking Member, respectively, of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which considers immigration-related matters.
Vermont’s Regional Center was established in 1997, and rechartered in 2007. Two Vermont ski resorts are active participants in the Regional Center pilot program and have launched ambitious development projects. Vermont’s Regional Center projects have drawn business and tourism to the state, fueling local economies and creating jobs.
The Regional Center program has generated millions of dollars in capital investment in American communities and created thousands of domestic jobs since 1993. The Centers attract foreign investors seeking legal permanent residency and a chance to invest in the American economy. Investors must pledge a minimum of $500,000 to a project within a Regional Center and independently apply for an EB-5 visa. If approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), foreign investors are granted a conditional two-year green card. After two years, the investor must provide proof that they have created at least ten jobs as a result of the investment and have met additional investment requirements set by USCIS. As a result of the program’s popularity, additional applications are pending with USCIS to establish new Regional Centers in several states.
City, county hope to boost Goodyear project with foreign investment
By Jim Mackinnon, Beacon Journal business writer , ohio.com
Akron and Summit County are seeking major foreign investors for the Goodyear headquarters project.
As part of that, the city and county are taking part in a federal program that dangles high-level visas, offering the potential for permanent residency, as carrots to entice that investment.
Public officials are hoping to expand the program beyond the Goodyear project.
Summit County is believed to be the first jurisdiction in Ohio that has been designated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a ”Regional Center” that will provide incentives to international investors, the city and county said in a news release.
Under the federal program, potential immigrants need to invest at least $500,000 in a U.S. project that creates at least 10 jobs.
The new tool is aimed at promoting job growth in Akron and elsewhere in the county while initially revolving around the Goodyear project, according to the release.
The designation will be marketed internationally as ”CMB Summit LLC Regional Center” under what is called the Immigrant Investor Pilot Program.
Industrial Realty Group, also known as IRG, the California developer behind the $900 million Goodyear headquarters project, told local public officials about the federal program, according to Summit County Executive Russ Pry.
IRG is using the same approach in redeveloping the former McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif., now called McClellan Park. IRG and its other partners in the McClellan Park group are seeking $6 million in foreign investment.
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By N2H
