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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