The U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) just issued a report which FINALLY quantifies the extent of TEA abuse by the largest EB-5 developers who manipulate unemployment data in order to qualify projects in rich neighborhoods as “targeted employment areas”, simply because prospective EB-5 investors would rarely if ever pay double the non-TEA investment amount (currently $1M U.S., as opposed to $500,000 for TEA-approved projects.)  I am VERY happy to report that the truth about where EB-5 money is REALLY going is finally out. The report, which looked at the EB-5 immigrant investor program over a three-month period last year, found that just 12% of investment went toward projects located in a census tract with an unemployment rate of at least 8%, even though those projects …

It is our pleasure to announce that we have partnered with NES Financial, offering our investors unparalleled transparency, security, and live access to the status of their EB-5 investment. In recent months, the EB-5 program and many EB-5 projects have been under scrutiny by the media, the US government, and primarily EB-5 investors. We can expect significant changes and increased regulation of the EB-5 program in the very near future. At AVS, we look forward to this increased level of compliance and commitment to our EB-5 investors. Since its inception, AVS has been focused on integrity and transparency. Today many of our investors have become limited partners in their respective EB-5 projects, reside in the US, and some have even applied for their permanent residencies. At AVS, we unders…

A letter written by two key Congress members regarding the urgent need to reform EB-5 laws which are being abused has triggered a massive online response, primarily from lobbyists and EB-5 Regional Centers who stand to lose their basic business model if and when the reforms take place. The issue relates to TEAs, “targeted employment areas”, and how they are defined.  When the EB-5 law was first drafted by Congress and enacted in the Immigration Act of 1990, the concept of creating TEA zones was the cornerstone of the EB-5 investor visa program: in order to attract investors to those financially-challenged parts of America where the need for new job creation was most urgent, certain areas which were poor could attract EB-5 investment by cutting the investment amount in half.  So, for exam…

With September 30th only weeks away, prospective EB-5 investors worldwide are being bombarded online with a barrage of information regarding the future of the U.S. immigrant investor visa’s Regional Center program.  In the case of Vietnam (where we will be next week), it’s gotten downright ugly, with new EB-5 projects in the country are basically fabricating lies in order to pressure people to invest. The truth is that the decision to proceed with EB-5 NOW is not a formulaic one but, rather, one that each investor and family need to make carefully, understanding the risks and benefits associated with either pulling trigger NOW, before Sept. 30, or waiting.  Online, the squeakiest wheels making the most noise about the Sept. 30 deadline include: Hard-sell EB-5 projects casting Septemb…

Okay, it is my last day in Ho Chi Minh, I’m tired, and I’m leaving for Miami at dawn tomorrow so there is NOTHING humble about this bragging:  according to the final 2015 EB-5 approval tally, Vietnam came in at #2 in the world with 280 EB-5 approvals.  We did the math and the average EB-5 family size for AVS EB5 has been 4, so if you are counting investors only, that means that Vietnam had about probably 70 investors approved for 2015.    Without counting our Vietnamese investors who filed I-526s last year and only counting approvals, we had 12.  So that means approximately 15% of all the Vietnamese EB-5 investors approved in 2015 chose AVS EB-5!! Who’s your Vietnam EB-5 Daddy? (-; I am leaving this amazing country just days before Vietnam sees its first BIG EB-5 specific event, host…

Yesterday I posted an entry regarding some GREAT news we just received regarding the very favorable economic impact report results for our first batch of I-829s.  After reflecting on the fact that the econometrics documented the creation of 50% more full-time-equivalent jobs than originally forecast…I decided to remove the blog.   Why? Well, humble-bragging aside — and Bianca and Laura call me on that on a daily basis — I decided that this news was more like a family celebration than a moment to thump my EB-5 chest.  Accordingly, I have sent each of our original first project investors a personal note conveying the great news and thanking them for having faith in American Venture Solutions EB-5 before we had our first approval and our still-sterling record of I-526 success. I full…

Sigh.  Even my venerable, beloved New York Times – the second best written English-language newspaper on earth (second only to the UK’s consistently brilliant Financial Times) – is vulnerable to the temptation of hype for sake of engaging readership.  Consider the opening line of today’s big piece on the EB-5 visa by Ron Nixon: “The easiest way to gain entry into the United States is not to walk across the border in the dead of night. It is to write a check.” As a former U.S. Visa Officer who, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, served as Fraud Officer in the U.S. Consulate General in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, when it was the single largest immigrant visa processing facility on the planet, I respectfully beg to disagree with both Mr. Nixon’s opening line and with the nonsense sputtered by…

EB-5 Investments fall under, we know, U.S. Securities laws…but I have a partial, academic disagreement with that concept as a blanket statement.   After all, the Howey Test requires there to be an expectation of financial gain to meet the accepted definition of “security”.  So whenever I am approached by a prospective AVS EB5 investor and I explain that our deal uses a 5 year loan model, that they’ll get a miserly 1% annual return, and that, at the end of the day, when they hopefully are U.S. Permanent Residents and get their $500,000 investment back, they KNOW from the first conversation that investing in AVS EB5 will represent a NET LOSS to their bank account, since the various fees and costs inherent in undertaking an EB-5 visa will no doubt EXCEED that $25,000 in interest they’ll …

Unfreakingbelievable:  after years of TEA manipulation by big EB-5 developers, the Senate Judiciary Committee finally schedules a meeting very properly titled “The Distortion of EB-5 Targeted Employment Areas: Time to End the Abuse” for THIS Wednesday…and BOOM, they just cancelled it! What an incredible coincidence, right? It can’t possibly have anything to do with, ahem, Big EB-5 lobbyists…can it? This morning I wrote about how a handful of EB-5 Regional Center heavyweights are basically stalling desperately-needed reforms to insure that REAL targeted employment areas in rural and poor urban areas benefit the EB-5 as Congress ALWAYS intended versus their glitzy highrises in Miami and Manhattan.  This afternoon they once again stall the inevitable.  See for yourself: Senate …