In July of last year, we asked the question, “Is EB-5 Dead?” EB-5, the notorious green-card-selling program that for decades had permitted super-rich Chinese (primarily) to buy their way into the United States, had failed to live up to even the minimum standards of respectability expected by the U.S. Congress and thus was being discontinued and possibly made defunct.
Briefly, EB-5 grants green cards and a path to U.S. citizenship to foreign investors wealthy enough to plop down a few hundred thousand on American development projects. It thus simultaneously imports a new overclass while selling off more and more of our country’s real estate.
The reports of EB-5’s death were premature, however, because this is Joe Biden’s America, where everything that can be done to betray America and Americans will be done.
Last week, Congress passed and Biden signed a renewal of the program, “EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022,” which has come back from the dead with some upgrades, listed here. Those upgrades, provided by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), include raising the minimum investment from $500K to $800K (thus ensuring we get the most super of the super-rich) and a host of provisos most of which begin with “requires. . .”
On his website, Grassley talks up the flaws in the original program by way of bragging about the brilliant reforms he has crafted:
It’s no secret that the EB-5 Regional Center Program has been a mess for years. Foreign investors exploited the program to get fast-tracked green cards, domestic developers exploited foreign investors to get fast cash for bogus projects and government officials picked winners and losers to score political favor. This has got to change. The Obama and Trump administrations took important steps to restore incentives for investment in rural and truly underserved areas, but Congress must act to fix other flaws that invite fraud and abuse. Our bill corrects the many defects in the current program and improves accountability so that it functions as Congress intended. Absent these fixes, this program should not be allowed to continue.
So Chuck and Pat have come to the rescue, serving up old wine in new bottles and toasting Chinese elites who will come in laughing.
For more, see Breitbart News.