Breaking News: Legislation Introduced For the Reform of EB-5
| New bill supports the long-term reauthorization of the EB-5 Regional Center Program with key improvements to protect investors and assure Program integrity |
March 18, 2021 (Washington, DC) – Today, the Coalition to Save and Create Jobs (CSCJ) and Invest in the USA (IIUSA), the only non-profit trade association for the EB-5 Regional Center Program, announced the introduction of the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2021 by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (D-V.T.). The bipartisan bill supports the long-term reauthorization and reform of the EB-5 Regional Center Program.
The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act reauthorizes the program through 2026 and provides additional transparency and integrity measures to improve accountability of applicants, Regional Centers, and their economic development projects.
“On behalf of CSCJ, Invest in the USA (IIUSA), and its leadership, I am pleased to share our unanimous support of the introduction of the bill and the work Senators Grassley and Leahy have achieved,” said Aaron Grau, Executive Director at IIUSA. Grau continued, “Members of Congress and the EB-5 community have agreed for years that the Regional Center Program needs integrity reforms to achieve long-term reauthorization, to protect good-faith immigrant investors; to support good-faith regional centers, and to provide appropriate oversight that still allows the Program to prosper – this bill does all four. We applaud the Senators and look forward to working with them, their Senate colleagues, and their equally principled partners in the House of Representatives to turn this bill into law.”
Senator Grassley said, “I appreciate IIUSA’s support of this legislation. I have been working to reform the EB-5 Regional Center Program for years, and I hope, with IIUSA’s support, that we are finally able to get this long-term reauthorization and reform package across the finish line,” He continued, “While the Obama and Trump administrations took important steps to restore incentives for investment in rural and truly underserved areas, Congress must act to fix other flaws in the program that invite fraud and abuse. Our bill corrects many defects in the current program and improves accountability so that it functions as Congress intended. I look forward to this bill becoming law.”
“I welcome IIUSA’s endorsement of this much-needed bipartisan bill to clean up the EB-5 program – one that Senator Grassley and I have worked on together for years. We successfully pushed both the Obama and Trump administrations to take important administrative steps to promote integrity and curtail abuses that have plagued the program. But the Department of Homeland Security cannot fix all of the EB-5 program’s flaws on its own. Congress must act decisively to comprehensively address the fraud and other vulnerabilities that have come to define the EB-5 program. Our bill would do just that,” said Senator Leahy.
The EB-5 Regional Center Program was created to attract investments from foreign individuals who meet specific capital and job creation requirements. EB-5 investments have filled funding gaps and have provided a vital source of capital for local economic development projects that create and support jobs, infrastructure, and services across the country. Since its inception, the EB-5 Program has drawn in more than $41 billion in capital investment from across the globe to support American businesses and created at least 820,000 job opportunities for U.S. workers.
[The above announcement was first published by IIUSA]
The full text of the bill is available here and a summary is here.