The Cash-for-Visas Program
As part of his warmed-over jobs plan, President Obama is repackaging "Buy American" stimulus subsidies to help hard-hit homegrown businesses. At the same time, however, Congress is pushing to expand a fraud-riddled investor program that puts U.S. citizenship for sale to the highest foreign business bidders.
Call it the Buy America Cash-for-Visas plan.
As I first reported 10 years ago, the EB-5 immigrant investor program was created under an obscure section of the 1990 Immigration Act. The law allows 10,000 wealthy foreigners a year to purchase green cards by investing between $500,000 and $1 million in new commercial enterprises or troubled businesses. After two years, foreign investors, their spouses and their children all receive permanent resident status — which allows them to contribute to U.S. political campaigns and provides a speedy gateway to citizenship. The program is set to expire in 2012.
On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee's Immigration subpanel entertained calls to save the EB-5 law. Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren is sponsoring a bill to salvage the immigrant investor visas. The legislation (sponsored by open-borders Democrat John Kerry and Republican Richard Lugar in the Senate) also creates a second program with lower barriers to entry that would provide "start-up visas" for foreign entrepreneurs. They would be granted unconditional permanent-resident status if they create a government-determined number of jobs.
And there's the rub. Obama's make-believe math on stimulus jobs saved or created — coupled with the snowballing $535 million, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bankruptcy scandal — tells you all you need to know about Washington's credibility in picking economic winners and losers.
If the feds can't be trusted to invest government subsidies wisely in American companies, how can they possibly determine which overseas investors will be successful here? And if top U.S. loan officials have demonstrated such sloppy, politically driven disregard for financial due diligence on risky half-billion-dollar enterprises, how can immigration officials be trusted to better protect the national interest?
Answer: They can't. In fact, the benefits of the EB-5 economic development plan have gone to former Immigration and Naturalization Service officials who formed lucrative limited partnerships to cash in on their access, and to shady foreign fraudsters.
Whistleblowers told me how immigrant investors paid token fees to these partnerships. The partnerships secured promissory notes for the remainder of the foreign investments, which were forgiven after investors received their permanent green cards. Former INS employees, working for these partnerships, aggressively lobbied their old colleagues to accept such bogus financial arrangements. As a result, according to an internal U.S. Justice Department investigative report, "aliens were paying $125K" instead of the required $500,000 to $1 million minimum, and "almost all of the monies went to the General Partners and the companies who set up the limited partners."
In 2007, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that the "program between 1995 and 1998 was frequently abused when would-be immigrants were allowed to pay a small amount in cash for a green card, signing a promissory note for the balance. The note didn't come due for several years — long after the two-year conditional period built into the EB-5 visa had ended and permanent residency had been granted."
An earlier Baltimore Sun investigation found "only a tiny fraction of the money ever made it to the companies seeking assistance." Many of the distressed U.S. firms that the program intended to help have closed because they never received promised funding.
Instead of allowing the troubled program to sunset, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has "streamlined" the EB-5 immigrant investor green card process — guaranteeing processing within 15 calendar days for foreign business "projects that are fully developed and ready to be implemented." The same expedited rush for government-directed investments gave us Solyndra. What's worse in this case is the sordid peddling of the privileges of citizenship.
Twenty years ago, when the program's failures were first exposed, Rep. John W. Bryant, a Texas Democrat, protested on the House floor: "This provision is an unbelievable departure from our tradition of cherishing our most precious birthright as Americans. Have we no self-respect as a nation? Are we so broke we have to sell our birthright?"
Apparently so.
- Michelle Malkin's blog
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Comments
Yea, like that's going to work
Submitted by CobraMan on Mon, 09/19/2011 - 4:26pm.
Yea, like that's going to work. Invite rich people to immigrate to America, invest in our economy, start new business and create employment, and then raise their corporate, investment, business, and individual taxes as soon as they become citizens! Who's going to fall for that?
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
IF YOU REALLY WANT THE TRUTH?
Submitted by Brittanicus on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 9:44pm.
IF YOU REALLY WANT THE TRUTH?
Governor of Texas Rick Perry canceled his chance of being President, as he had an insignificant standing on holding back the hordes of illegal aliens. In prior speeches he was more for amnesty than against it and handing out taxpayers money for tuition of illegal immigrant children is not honing the TEA PARTY to support him. The majority of Americans have trusted Politicians like Perry for far too long, good orators in front of crowds, but in actual fact his words are meaningless when it comes to legislating what "The People" really want--such as a real double layer fence across our Southern border--of which he disapproves and is a urgent National Security issue.
In Furtherance to the growing concerns over the border fence that President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano declares “that it’s Secure?” Go to the “American Patrol” website, and digest the surveys along the 2000 miles of border. It just doesn’t exist. Type into Google “American Patrol” and add Fence as keywords and then find out the truth and not exaggerations or lies. Thousands of miles still remain wide open, consisting of decaying rusted fencing. Hundreds of miles are just supplemented with vehicle barriers, which anybody could pass through.
Check and decide for yourself if the borders are controlled on American Patrols full explanatory maps. There are hundreds of miles that federal agents that are even prohibited from the border areas , because of environmental laws that have gone haywire with regulatory policies. Yet the environmentalist remain lock-jawed on the mounds of filth and human effluent left by the thousands of illegal migrants and immigrants who slip through every month, who end up pilfering the taxpayers pockets . I think human life of a rancher comes first before a species of frog or a tiny plant instead of another “political Correct” endangered Species Act..
Far superior in worth for Presidency is Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, as neither are part of the GOP establishment. Bachmann, Cain should address strongly the expensive and social consequences of illegal immigration, which is consuming this nation in balkanization and wrecking American democracy. Both are heavily supported by the TEA PARTY and have exceptional immigration grades, to enforce the laws already on the books. Both are Constitutional Conservatives and believe fully in shrinking government, scrapping the present tax code and returning agencies of government to each individual State. Only the REAL TEA PARTY doesn’t crave the illegal alien votes, or massive influx of cheap labor for overwhelming power or profitable interests. If I had my way, I would vote in Donald Trump as president. He would make sure that International trade treaties played fairly. No other country has the most consumers’ in the world, so Trump would insure fair treaties instead of what we have now. My God! A child could get better results, then the rip off our Diplomats have made with China.
Don’t believe in the Liberal Progressives, open border and radical organizations that THE TEA PARTY is an opponent of E-Verify as this is a downright lie. The TEA PARTY NATION that is just one of thousands of independent entities, as the TEA PARTY is just commonplace Americans, who have been kicked around too long. The majority of TEA PARTY members are unbending there will be no more Amnesties. No clandestine small Amnesties that have been happening for years, millions entering annually. True TEA PARTY leaders will rescind any Sanctuary City or State policies, with refusal a loss of federal funds.
If you are appalled by the mockery of our immigration laws, reach for that phone and call you’re Representative at 202-224-3121. Don't wait--this is a very powerful E-Verify bill that could help millions of Americans find work, especially in the lower incomes. When 20 million Americans are jobless, being only finding temporary or part time work, this should be not the time for hiring foreign nations. My commentary cannot possibly cover the whole travesties perpetrated on Americans, but all evidence of years of failure, unconcern and corruption is available at NumbersUSA, American Patrol and Judicial Watch. There are just three of the hundreds of serious pro-sovereignty organization, fighting the open border zealots.
In Conclusion, Farmers and Mega-agricultural corporations complaining about E-verify and lose of cheap labor are keeping concealed that when an illegal alien worker is sick, he leaves that unfortunate uninsured soul at the emergency room. His whole families also are treated from a minor cough to a serious illness—which the taxpayers pay for eventually. Same with all the children, that are placed in Public schools—which come out of your taxes, not the farmer’s profits. It’s a fact that State and federal governments appropriate from taxpayers an estimated $113 billion dollars a year in catering to illegal aliens. (Heritage foundation study)
MY EARLIER BLOGS: http://brittanicus-enoughisenough.blogspot.com