By CIS, Special for USDR
A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies analyzes the controversial China City of America development proposal, an immense project northwest of New York City largely funded through the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program.
The EB-5 program grants foreign investors and their families permanent residence in the United States (green cards, leading to citizenship) in return for a modest $500,000 investment that is supposed to create, directly or indirectly, at least ten full-time jobs for U.S. workers.
The CCOA project represents a perfect storm of EB-5 investor visa controversies, highlighting the many flaws in this questionable immigration program. The project would be in Sullivan County, NY, on Yankee Lake.
Among the immigration-related issues is the job-creation requirement. Given the reported number of investors, the first phase of the project would need to create 2,550 full-time jobs. It is difficult to see how this number can be reached since jobs may not come from the land purchase, and only short-term jobs would result from the construction.
Among the questions that remain unanswered are whether the Chinese-style construction will require the importation of foreign labor, as has been the case elsewhere, and whether the proposed college at the center of the CCOA development would be non-profit, as most are, in which case non-profit jobs don’t count for EB-5 visa purposes.
View the entire report at: http://www.cis.org/china-city-perfect-storm-eb-5-proposal-new-york
David North, a Fellow of the Center and an internationally recognized authority on immigration policy, said, “I find it interesting that this project is relying on alien investors for funding. From Chicago to South Dakota from Texas to California, the immigrant investor program has had major problems with fraud and project failure. One explanation for the numerous problems is the EB-5 does not attract successful venture or private equity operators, but rather it attracts aliens with more limited capital who might otherwise not be admitted to the United States. The attraction is the visa, not the capital gain potential.”
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985. It is the nation’s only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.
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