Q: 如何客观看待EB-5区域中心项目至今取得的成果?
Ignacio A.Donoso律师 :
The EB-5 Regional Center Program offers both an extraordinary tool for creating jobs, transforming communities and offering access to visas to deserving investors with economic capital, and a platform for risk-prone investments tied to complex visa processes. In the last two decades, the EB-5 Regional Center program has seen thousands of visa applicants - primarily from China - who have completed the full cycle of investment, from conditional green card status, to job creation, and then removal of conditions with return of their investment capital. Some investors can point with pride to the fact that their capital was used to help build landmark projects in major American cities while creating thousands of jobs for U.S. workers. At the same time, the EB-5 Regional Center Program has experienced projects that have failed, or been mismanaged, or were simply paper-thin schemes to enrich promoters at the expense of investors.
Q: 国会关于EB-5区域中心改革已取得哪些进展?面临哪些挑战?
Ignacio A.Donoso律师 :
Legislators in Congress and industry leaders throughout the U.S. have been negotiating for approximately two years on changes to the EB-5 Regional Center Program. To some, these negotiations have yielded little more than a series of improvised short-term extensions of the EB-5 Regional Center Program. Yet, the negotiations themselves have brought about a fundamental awareness that EB-5 Regional Center Program has been tremendously successful as a tool for investment and job creation. The challenges for the future, therefore, concern reaching agreement on how best to direct investment of EB-5 capital to communities throughout the U.S.; how to decrease the potential for project failures and mismanagement, and how to reduce visa waiting lists to reasonable levels for Chinese EB-5 applicants.
Q: 如何看待上述挑战通过立法或改革手段解决的可能性?
Ignacio A.Donoso律师 :
As discrete negotiations among elected officials continue, observers do expect a legislative solution, but few are predicting when the U.S. Congress will resolve the challenges. Recent events are indicative efforts by legislators and U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) to continue seeking solutions. First, the U.S. federal government has postponed issuance of new EB-5 regulations by USCIS until April 2018. Second, the EB-5 Regional Center Program was extended until December 8, 2017 without changes, after it was set to expire on September 30, 2017. Most observers believe that these two actions give legislators needed time to reach agreement on changes to the EB-5 Regional Center Program.
Q: 从目前种种迹象来看,EB-5未来将面临哪些改革条款?
Ignacio A.Donoso律师 :
Most proposed new EB-5 legislation and the proposed USCIS regulations for the EB-5 Regional Center program will increase the minimum investment amount from its current $500,000 for Targeted Employment Areas (TEAs) and $1,000,000 for non-TEAs. One recent EB-5 reform bill was released in late July 2017 by Congressman Fitzpatrick (R-PA). The Fitzpatrick EB-5 bill proposed to continue the EB-5 Regional Center program but increase TEA investments to $800,000 and increase the investment threshold to $1.2 million for all other investments. This solution is similar to two proposed laws presented in April 2017. The first, by Sen. Cornyn (R-TX), would raise TEA investments to $800,000 and non-TEAs to $925,000. The second, by Sen. Grassley (R-IA), would raise TEA investments to $800,0000 and maintain non-TEAs unchanged at $1,000,000.
Q: 除了各种EB-5改革提案,EB-5区域中心政策未来是否还受哪些其他因素影响?
Ignacio A.Donoso律师 :
In contrast to these proposed bills, on August 2, 2017, Senator David Perdue (R-GA) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) introduced a proposed bill to entirely revamp the U.S. system for granting lawful permanent residence (i.e., a "green card") and, in the process, eliminate the EB-5 program and all other Employment Based immigration categories. The Perdue-Cotton bill, known as "Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act," or "RAISE Act", would create a points system for granting green cards, while simultaneously reducing the total number of green cards issued each year. The RAISE Act seeks to create a long list factors that would allot points to applicants. Points would be granted to applicants for factors such as: knowledge of the English language, completion of university education, achievements showing extraordinary ability, or making an investment in the U.S. For example, a RAISE Act applicant would be granted 6 points for investments of at least $1.35 million, and 12 points for investments of at least $1.8 million. Such an investment must last at least 3 years, and the applicant must play an active management role in a new commercial enterprise. Despite making an investment under the RAISE Act, an applicant is not assured of having sufficient points to qualify for a green card.