Next Tuesday-Thursday I will be at USC, UC Irvine and UCLA presenting our new seminar entitled:"Life after F-1: Taking Control of Your U.S. Permanent Residence"…a free seminar on the subject ofU.S. immigration options for graduating international students interested inlegally remaining in the U.S. The seminar (which is followed by a Q&Asession) covers: tactical planning for seeking employment via OptionalPractical Training (OPT) how to present your "internationalness" as aplus and not a minus to prospective employers  Post-graduation OPT strategiesto optimize H-1B employment opportunities making PERM an intelligentinvestment in the eyes of your U.S. employer  what to do if your employer'simmigration attorney is terrible eliminati…

My sons were down from school for Easter weekend and I had a nice chat about "the future" with Alex, my eldest, who will be graduating from the University of Florida this summer.  Alex is a bright, hardworking  young man, so I struggle to maintain that fine line between giving him my sage fatherly counsel and making him cringe.With his graduation around the corner, and his plans for graduate school, I felt compelled to brief him on a lot of the global economic realities visible most clearly to those of us addicted to the Wall Street Journal.  He listened, and it is notable that the older he gets, the more he knows what he does not know.   As I told him about the barrage of clerkship requests we are getting from law students who are trying to get SOMETHING…

I was talking with a friend of mine – a securities attorney –  the other day about the dramatic surge of EB-5-pushing attorneys, a stark contrast to the reality only a year ago, when few immigration attorneys were actively pursuing the visa category.  My friend, a partner with a major national law firm and former SEC attorney, said that it is only a matter of time before some of us in the visa business – and in the Regional Center business – get in trouble.Here's why: the EB-5 Regional Center Visa is a "security" within the meaning of U.S. law, which includes any note, stock, bond,  or “investment contract”.  And as my distinguished colleague Angelo Paparelli and his co-writers explain in this excellent analysis re the relevance of securities laws to…

Canada entered their current model of investment-based immigration years after the U.S. enacted the EB5 Regional Center visa category, but they sprinted out of the starting gate.  When I had my Hong Kong office in the mid-90's, in the years preceding Hong Kong's cessation to China by the British, the EB-5 visa had been on the books for years…at least on paper.  In reality, after the procedural nightmares the USG – at the time, the INS – created in the regulatory framework for the legislation, the attractive features of the U.S. immigrant investor platform were eclipsed by the downsides.I saw many nervous HK business people over those years, and most of the ones I helped immigrate to the U.S. were ushered in via L-1/EB-1 structures.  I arrived in Hong Kong after t…

It's no surprise that when times are tough and jobs are scarce, the number of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. drops.  What IS interesting, however, is in trying to understand the impact of the recession on overall U.S. immigration…and census stats can't quite tell the tale.Today's Wall Street Journal features a great article on page A3 entitled "The Sun Belt Loses Its Shine".  The piece examines data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau which illustrates the rapid cooling of the uber-hot migrant magnets of the past.  The data, collected between July 2008 and July 2009, is a snapshot of America during the "depths of the recession", as the author puts it.Based on the numbers, some of the country's top immigrant destinations …

The hypothetical: You are approached by a client who has a solid business in place, a good history of success; the company is looking to expand production to meet export demand.  Although highly invested in the firm, they need money for the expansion, but the banks are saying "no way, Jose", citing their dried up appetite for expansion in this wobbly economy.  They have heard something about this "immigrant investor deal", and you give them the rundown on the EB-5 visa, suggesting either the creation of a new Regional Center for their objectives or, if you know of one, direct them to an established local RC which might be able to accommodate the project.You're excited, the client is excited, and you jump in to start your homework but, lo and behold, despi…

To my surprise (and to their credit), I received a telephone call at 7 pm the other night from a member of USCIS' Laguna Niguel's EB-5 Adjudications team.  Much to the amusement of several attorney friends who were tickled by my naive belief that one could simply call up and speak to the EB-5 folks, I had left a voice message about a week ago.  The gentleman who called was friendly, and I was TOTALLY off guard, having slipped into "done with work" mode and onto the couch a bit earlier.  After gently chiding me for actually leaving a voice message (they much prefer email communication), he — and I won't tell you his name out of respect for his courteous call — asked me how he could help me.  Well, my list of questions was back in the office on …

If there is a single issue (besides the daily barrage of EB-5 inquiries) about which folks have been emailing me the past few weeks , it is definitely the Priority Date situation.  F-1 students, in particular, have evolved from the standard concerns about the transition from OPT to H-1B status (although, in this economy, even THAT is proving difficult) to long-range "when on earth will I ever get my green card?"With Obama's promised Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) an increasingly distant possibility, transition from temporary status in the U.S. – as a student OR as a professional worker — to U.S. permanent residency via employment is increasingly nebulous.What really bugs me, however, is the soothing chant I keep hearing from others in my profession:"RELAX,…