The Independent View: The Visa Program Known as EB-5

The visa program known as EB-5, allows foreign investors:

In exchange for investing at least $500,000 in a project promising to create jobs, foreigners receive a two-year visa with a good chance of obtaining permanent residency for them and their families. In 2014, the most recent year for which records are available, the U.S. issued 10,692 of these visas, 85% to people from China.

While the program has many supporters who argue it attracts foreign capital and creates jobs at no U.S. taxpayer cost, Congressional overseers and Homeland Security have raised sharp concerns. Applicants are sometimes cleared in less than a month and the critics say the government is essentially selling visas to wealthy foreigners with no proven skills, paving the way for money laundering and compromising national security.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative branch of Congress, found last year in a general report about the EB-5 program that many applications contained a high risk of fraud, and discovered cases of counterfeit documentation. State Department officials told the GAO that there is “no reliable method to verify the source of the funds of petitioners.”

Last spring, a Homeland Security special agent testified that EB-5 applicants from China, Russia, Pakistan and Malaysia "had been approved in as little as 16 days, with files lacking basic law enforcement queries."

Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican who is Chairman of the Judiciary committee, last month cited a memo from Homeland Security saying that EB-5 visa holders do not clear the same hurdles as other immigrants, like proof of education and work qualifications. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said at the hearing that while he has supported EB-5 over the years, "If the program is to continue, it must be reformed."

Visas have become an issue in the Trump campaign although he hasn’t addressed the EB-5 program. He has acknowledged using temporary visas for workers at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. He says he wants to eliminate what he calls "rampant, widespread" abuse of temporary visas for skilled workers and is committed to "institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program."

Trump Bay Street is a 50-story luxury rental apartment building being built by Kushner Companies, whose Chief Executive officer, Jared Kushner, is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. It will have an outdoor pool, indoor golf simulator and sweeping views of Lower Manhattan; it adjoins an existing high rise condo, Trump Plaza Residence. The firm that was hired to seek investors, US Immigration Fund, is run by Florida developer Nicholas Mastroianni, who announced a partnership last year with a Trump golf course in Jupiter, Florida.

The Jersey City project has raised $50 million, about a quarter of its funding, from loans obtained through EB-5, according to a slide presentation by US Immigration Fund. Mark Giresi, General Counsel of US Immigration Fund, said he believed nearly all of the EB-5 investors in the Trump project were from China.