Congress voted yesterday to extend the budget for two weeks and EB-5 gets yet another brief extension. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate are still tinkering with a number of issues which are more politically pressing than EB-5, and the two week extension was agreed upon with Democrats to prevent the disruption of an official government shutdown of nonessential services (which has happened in the past.) The so-called “C0ntinuing Resolution” approved the extension of many USG programs, including EB-5, until December 22nd, 2017, with no changes to any of the underlying laws affected.
While Big EB-5, led by IIUSA, continues to dig their boots in to prevent the much-needed reforms to the egregious TEA abuse, Congress is still pondering changes to the program to insure that EB-5 investor capital is delivered to truly low-income areas in need of job creation. Today the U.S. government released quarterly job numbers showing that several hundred thousand jobs were created in the past three months and that unemployment remains at an incredibly low 4.1%. Despite that reality, Big EB-5 continues to fight to deprive true TEA projects in poor urban and rural areas the strategic advantages Congress provided when the EB-5 category was created in 1990.
As always, all we can do is breathe a sigh of relief in knowing that for those investors who have been hesitating, you have two more weeks to enter the EB-5 program at the existing $500,00o capital investment requirement. Choose wisely and choose an EB-5 project run by folks who will be there for you in the future as you family navigates the green card process in the future years to come.
JL
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