IIUSA Executive Director, Aaron Grau, recently shared his perspectives on the most pragmatic approach to the Regional Center reauthorization efforts with readers of the Investment Migration Insider. In his analysis Grau notes that “The EB-5 community still has an opportunity to secure a long-term program with perhaps more than a few badly needed (wanted) improvements and the entire EB-5 ecosystem will reach that goal with prudence and pragmatism.”
We encourage all EB-5 industry stakeholders to consider joining IIUSA to support our important work on your behalf as we negotiate directly with leaders on the Hill and others throughout the industry.
Orginally Published in Investment Migration Insider
by Aaron Grau, Executive Director, IIUSA
Developing public policy should always yield pragmatic utilitarian outcomes, i.e., the greatest good for the most people. Therefore, to pragmatically reauthorize the EB-5 Regional Center Program (“the Program”) stakeholders must consider the entire EB-5 ecosystem and what is politically possible given everyone’s needs and wants.
The EB-5 ecosystem includes regional centers, immigrant investors and their families, immigration attorneys, and state and local economic leaders. There are others, of course, but these stakeholders have the most to gain (or loose) by reauthorizing the Program. Each stakeholder has their own priorities – many overlap and are critical to the long-term success and growth of the Program while some of them are critical to protecting good faith investors. However, when balanced against the Program’s survival, it’s reauthorization, all these items are “wants,” not “needs.” It is not utilitarian, pragmatic, or even realistic to pursue our wants at the expense of our most essential need.
As we engage in the political process to reestablish the Program, we must be aware of what is politically possible. For example, if doubling the number of EB-5 visas from 10,000 to 20,000 is not politically feasible; if it is a provision that can’t pass political muster among Members of Congress and would drag down the broader reauthorization effort, is it worth insisting on including in a reauthorization bill?
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