Latest news with #EB-5ReformandIntegrityActof2022
Time of India
13 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Indian EB-5 investors take USCIS to court over ‘unlawful' denial of application
Representative image A group of Indian nationals who collectively invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the US economy under the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program (commonly referred to as the investment-linked green card) have sued the head of the US government office overseeing the program, alleging unlawful denial of their applications and failure to implement investor protections mandated by law. The lawsuit, filed in a US District Court (Northern District of California) lists seven plaintiffs—Indian citizens living in California, New York, and India—who invested in a pooled fund managed by the now defunct Texas EB-5 Regional Center. The suit names Alissa Emmel, Chief of the Immigrant Investor Program Office at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), as the sole defendant. At the heart of the dispute is the plaintiffs' contention that USCIS failed to honour provisions of the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA). The Act was passed by the US Congress to shield 'good faith' EB-5 investors from fallout when regional centers or project sponsors failed to comply with program requirements or became defunct. This lawsuit is perhaps the first of its kind following the passage of the RIA. Under the EB-5 route currently an investment of $800,000 for projects in Target Employment Areas (TEAs) - which are rural and high-unemployment areas or for infrastructure projects; or an investment of $1,050,000 in other cases, entitles the investor to a green-card comparatively quickly. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Perdagangkan CFD Emas dengan Broker Tepercaya IC Markets Mendaftar Undo For Indians, caught in a decades long backlog for an employment-linked green card, this route is a quicker option – if they have the money to make the investment required under the EB-5 program. In addition, to the investment, job creation of at least ten local jobs is required. Investments can be made either directly (such as by operating a business) or indirectly via regional centers, which in turn invest in commercial enterprises which initiate specific projects – such as building a hotel. A significant number of investors opt for the regional center route. According to the lawsuit-complaint, the Texas-based regional center failed to pay statutorily required fees and did not file the required annual compliance forms. Under the RIA, such noncompliance should have triggered an automatic termination of the center within 90 days. However, USCIS allegedly took no action until more than a year later—following a separate lawsuit filed by another investor. Because USCIS delayed the termination of the regional center and failed to notify investors as required, the plaintiffs argue they were wrongly denied the opportunity to amend their EB-5 petitions or re-associate with compliant projects—a key protection offered under the RIA. Instead, each of their applications (Form I-526 petitions)—filed between 2019 and 2020—were summarily denied in 2024. The lawsuit states that USCIS violated the Administrative Procedure Act by unlawfully withholding agency action and failing to follow statutory procedures. Beyond the legal claims, the lawsuit-complaint documents personal hardships that the plaintiffs had to bear: missed career opportunities, financial hardship, and emotional distress stemming from prolonged uncertainty. Some have lived in the US for years on temporary visas and were hoping for permanent residency through the EB-5 route. Others, who are in India are unable to plan their futures. One plaintiff, based in California holding an H-1B visa, described the strain of being laid-off and the difficulty in finding suitable employment opportunities without a green card. Owing to his temporary non-immigrant visa status, he also pointed out that it was difficult to travel to India to attend marriages or even funerals. Another plaintiff, based in Santa Clara, said he passed up several career advancement opportunities due to the instability of his immigration status and also put his dream of home-ownership on hold. For plaintiffs still residing in India, the story was similar. Two of the petitioners from Gujarat said they had turned down business opportunities and now faced uncertainty about both professional prospects and personal plans. In their lawsuit-complaint, these plaintiffs submitted that USCIS's inaction undermines Congressional intent behind the 2022 reform, which was specifically designed to prevent immigrant investors from losing their immigration prospects due to failures beyond their control. Despite public USCIS statements that pre-RIA investors are eligible for protections, the plaintiffs say the agency has failed to apply those principles in practice. Alexandra George Santhanam, Associate Attorney at The Galati Law Firm, which is representing these investors, stated, 'Plaintiffs each invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the U.S. economy. They did everything in their power to apply for permanent residency in good faith. USCIS ignored the duties imposed upon it by Congress. Because of that, their American Dream is now dead. This is an injustice that the Court has the power to address and order the Defendant to remedy. ' Plaintiffs are asking the court to declare USCIS' inaction unlawful, reopen their EB-5 petitions, and provide the written notices necessary to reinvest their capital and continue their immigration processes. The lawsuit may test how seriously US immigration authorities are held to their own statutory obligations—and whether the 'American Dream' that the EB-5 investors were sold can be salvaged by court intervention. Stay informed with the latest business news, updates on bank holidays and public holidays . AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's Gold Card Visa, Explained
Touted as a way to raise revenue, a 'gold card' visa program announced by President Donald Trump last month would require a $5 million payment in exchange for permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship. While the astronomical price tag is the most eye-catching aspect of the proposal, it diverges from similar offerings like the EB-5 investor visa in that the fee can be paid on behalf of somebody else and would also seemingly exempt recipients from having to pay taxes on income earned overseas. The gold card's primary purpose is to create a new revenue stream large enough to offset the estimated $4.5 trillion increase in new deficits under the administration's proposed budget. Trump has set an ambitious goal to sell 1 million gold cards, which would generate $5 trillion for the government. Apart from the fiscal benefits, during his March 4 address to Congress, Trump also touted the gold card as a way to ensure the U.S. attracts and retains wealthy immigrants despite the administration's sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration. While details are sparse ahead of a tentative launch date in March, the information that is available bodes poorly for the gold card's chances of successful and speedy implementation. The gold card was first presented as taking the place of the EB-5 investor visa program, which allocates roughly 10,000 visas—the first step to getting a green card that allows permanent legal residency—each year for individuals who make an $1.05 million investment (with a provision allowing for a lower $800,000 investment in 'targeted employment areas') that creates or saves 10 American jobs. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who appears to be one of the main architects of the gold card proposal, characterized the EB-5 in his remarks as 'full of nonsense, make believe, and fraud.' Since then, the administration has indicated that while the EB-5 will be restructured, it will remain in place alongside the new gold card program. The EB-5 was most recently modified by Congress through the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, or RIA. The RIA gave the Department of Homeland Security better oversight tools, strengthened the vetting process by requiring background checks for a greater range of individuals involved in EB-5 investment projects, and created an 'EB-5 Integrity Fund' to support compliance investigations. Criticisms of the EB-5's potential for fraud are thus not new, and while the EB-5 was an avenue for some high-profile fraud cases the overall rate of proven fraud was rare even before the reforms were passed. In the last quarter of fiscal year 2024 only 3 percent of EB-5 petitions filed after RIA were denied, indicating that even with increased scrutiny most applicants and investment projects meet the necessary criteria. One reason the EB-5 program seems to be safe for now is that interest in it is on the rise. Fiscal year 2024 saw the greatest number of applications for EB-5 visas since 2020, and one analysis estimates that the EB-5 needs a 30 percent increase in the number of visas it has in order to keep up with demand. This excess demand could theoretically be diverted towards the gold card program instead. The administration will struggle to balance its desired speed of implementation with the rigor of vetting necessary to ensure the gold card program does not create any national security risks—especially since a large number of applicants will be from China. In 2024, about 70 percent of all EB-5 applications came from Chinese nationals. China also has the second largest number of millionaires in the world, surpassed only by the U.S. itself. The gold card will thus need to draw heavily from the Chinese business class to meet its fiscal targets. This will become a significant complication for the program as it could become a way for China to skirt key U.S. restrictions. For example, the Senate is currently poised to advance a bipartisan bill banning Chinese enterprises and individuals from buying land near U.S. military bases. But with the gold card, wealthy Chinese individuals connected to the Chinese Communist Party would be able to evade these bans by first acquiring U.S. citizenship. Unlike the EB-5, which requires a personal investment and gives visas only to the investor and the investor's spouse and minor children, the gold card can be purchased on behalf of someone else, so it will require more careful vetting of both the funder and the beneficiary. On a domestic level, the gold card also seems poised to create a rift within the Republican Party. As the party turns increasingly skeptical of globalism and even legal immigration, selling American citizenship to the world's wealthy elite and granting them the ability to wield greater influence on American politics could be met with resistance. For example, a European millionaire could hypothetically secure a gold card and then use it to get around Federal Election Commission restrictions on political spending by foreign nationals to advocate for progressive causes. If the gold card program does wind up providing tax exemptions for recipients on income earned outside of the U.S., it would also create a two-tiered system where gold card holders enjoy a more privileged level of citizenship than natural-born Americans, who are subject to tax on such income. On top of these issues, the gold card will almost certainly falter in its core mission of creating a significant new stream of government revenue. The gold card cannot be projected to generate $5 trillion in revenue—Trump's stated goal—under any reasonable set of assumptions. According to the Henley & Partners 2024 Global Wealth Migration Report, an estimated 135,000 millionaires will move to a new country in 2025. If historical trends hold, the U.S. can expect to attract a little more than 3 percent of that flow, or about 4,000 millionaires. Even if the U.S. somehow sold every single millionaire estimated to move in 2025 a gold card, this would come out to only $675 billion dollars, and many millionaires aren't wealthy enough to afford a $5 million flat payment. The gold card program would therefore need to rely on very high net-worth individuals and corporations willing to pay the fee on behalf of an applicant in order to drum up the target revenue, but both of these also have significant limitations. There are only 29,350 people in the world with a net worth of more than $100 million, and a third of them already live in the United States. For their part, corporations have little incentive to pay such a high amount for an employee who would otherwise be tied to working for them through a similar and far less expensive pathway like the H-1B visa. While these financial obstacles are daunting, they pale in comparison to the ones the gold card faces for becoming law to begin with. Creating the gold card visa would require an act of Congress. Under the U.S. Constitution and immigration laws, only Congress can establish new immigrant visa categories or modify the criteria for issuing green cards. The EB-5 program itself was created by statute as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) sets annual numerical limits and eligibility rules for immigrant visas. The EB-5 investor visa is part of the employment-based immigration quota (capped at roughly 10,000 visas for investors each year, out of 140,000 employment-based visas). Issuing 1 million gold cards would go far beyond these existing limits. Unless Congress amends the INA to create a separate uncapped category or significantly raise caps, the administration simply cannot issue unlimited green cards. The Trump administration might attempt interim measures, but each faces legal limitations. For example, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does have authority to set certain regulations for the EB-5 program, such as adjusting investment amounts for inflation, and in 2019 DHS raised the minimum investment from $500,000 to $900,000 by regulation. However, transforming EB-5 into the 'gold card' by raising the minimum to $5 million, scrapping the job requirement, and redirecting funds to the U.S. Treasury would almost certainly exceed the statutory authority of option, as discussed by David Bier of the Cato Institute, would be for DHS to try to use its parole authority or other non-immigrant visa categories to approximate a gold card visa program. For instance, the administration might set up a parole program for investors who contribute $5 million, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. temporarily as a 'significant public benefit.' The Obama administration did something similar on a smaller scale with the International Entrepreneur Rule, using parole to admit startup founders. However, parole is not permanent residency and does not confer a path to citizenship or a green card, and would likely generate little interest as a result. The Trump administration also has abolished Biden-era parole programs by claiming that the use of categorical parole exceeds its intended purpose. All together, the gold card is a creative proposal with ambitions that far exceed its practical, political, and legal constraints.
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's Gold Card Visa Program Is Causing Panic In Real Estate Circles. Here's Why
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. President Donald Trump has put a price on coveted green cards—$5 million. That's how much he plans to sell the gateway cards to citizenship, which allow U.S. residency and the ability to work and do business in the U.S. However, the proposal, first touted by investment guru Grant Cardone in December, is ringing alarm bells in a sector the president knows well—real estate. Dubbed the 'gold card,' Trump's plan to sell green cards is intended to replace the EB-5 investor visa, which the real estate industry has favored as a way to provide funding for major projects, the New York Times reports. Major developments such as Manhattan's Hudson Yards, the San Francisco Shipyard, and Trump Plaza Residences in Jersey City, N.J., have all received funding from overseas investors via the EB-5 program, which includes U.S. residency, among its perks. Don't Miss: Many don't know there are tax benefits when buying a unit as an investment — Deloitte's fastest-growing software company partners with Amazon, Walmart & Target – The EB-5 program costs considerably less than Trump's proposed $5 million gold card. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 'for petitions filed after March 15, 2022, the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 raises the investment amounts to $1,050,000 for standard cases and $800,000 for targeted employment areas.' While the EB-5 program is not a huge moneymaker— according to the New York Times, it contributes about $5 billion to the $28 trillion U.S. economy — it is pivotal for a select group of major real estate developers. It dramatically changes the bottom line, turning losses into profits when compared to borrowing more expensive money from domestic lenders. 'Cheap capital is the crack cocaine to the real estate industry and probably every other industry,' Matt Gordon, the CEO of E3iG, which advises both foreign investment-based visa applicants and U.S. companies seeking funding, told the Times. 'They and their rather large political donations are going to be very motivated.' Trending: , which provides access to a pool of short-term loans backed by residential real estate with just a $100 minimum. Established in 1990 to help attract investment for rural and economically depressed areas, the EB-5 program's approval requirements were initially based on the creation of 10 specific new jobs from the business the visa engendered. Over time, that became a gray area, morphing into each investor's funding, resulting in 10 jobs overall for the economy. Although all types of businesses can apply for EB-5 visas, the real estate industry has heavily embraced the program. It allows an investor to get citizenship, lending money at much lower rates than developers would have to pay for construction otherwise. 'You're really cutting, you know, 30 to 50% of your cost of capital, on a rather significant portion of your capital,' Gordon said. 'Naturally, the whole world is panicking,' Ishaan Khanna, the president of the American Immigrant Investor Alliance, a group that lobbies on behalf of EB-5 investors, told the Times. 'As India and China woke up, my phone blew up.' Trending: CEO of Integris gathered a team of senior investment managers who have $34.22 billion in combined owned and managed assets in the West Coast — 'I'm sure that if they can come up with $5 million, they probably have a little extra to buy real estate,' Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, told MarketWatch of potential gold card buyers. 'So it will bring about more demand in the ultra-high-end of the real estate market,' Marketwatch said that similar visa programs have increased housing prices in Portugal and Spain. 'Today, 94 out of every 100 such visas are linked to real-estate investment ... in major cities that are facing a highly stressed market and where it's almost impossible to find decent housing for those who already live, work and pay their taxes there,' Reuters quoted Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez as saying last April. Trump's proposed gold card won't happen overnight. To abolish a legally binding visa program and introduce a new one, Congressional approval is required. It's unlikely anything much will change until 2027, when the EB-5 program expires, requiring Congress to renew 2019, the European Commission warned that golden visa programs, similar to the one Trump proposes, could be used for money laundering, tax evasion, and corruption. The result has been that many European countries stopped or modified their programs. A voting rights advocate, Rotimi Adeoye, described it as 'a wholesale rewrite of what it means to be an American. In Trump's vision," he wrote on "citizenship is no longer about building a shared national project; it is an asset reserved for those who can afford it." Read Next: If there was a new fund backed by Jeff Bezos offering a ? Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." This article Trump's Gold Card Visa Program Is Causing Panic In Real Estate Circles. Here's Why originally appeared on Sign in to access your portfolio
