Chinese investors vs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Filing Date:September 30, 2016

Case:Mirror Lake Village, LLC v. USCIS-IPO

Jurisdiction:Federal District Court for the District of Columbia

Status:Pending

Civil / Criminal:Civil

Declaratory Judgment

This action is brought against the Defendants for declaratory judgment and review of an agency action under the Administrative Procedures Act based on the Defendants' unlawful denial of the I-526 Petitions for Alien Entrepreneur of Plaintiffs Deng, Ge, Hu, Li, Li, Su and Wang (the "Investor Plaintiffs"), and corresponding Motions to Reopen and Reconsider those denials. The Investor Plaintiffs filed I-526 petitions to seek immigrant visas under the employment-based fifth category of the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA") - which allows foreign nationals who invest at least $500,000 into a new commercial enterprise in the U.S., and whose investment results in the creation of at least ten jobs for U.S. workers, to obtain conditional and then unconditional lawful permanent resident status, on the basis of their investment of $500,000 each into Mirror Lake Village, LLC. Although the Investor Plaintiffs' $500,000 investments are not guaranteed and are fully at risk of loss, Defendants denied the petitions on the basis that the investments were not "at-risk" because a provision of the governing agreement provided the Investor Plaintiffs with a right to require that Mirror Lake Village, LLC repurchase their interests, contingent on Mirror Lake Village, LLC having sufficient cash to do so, at a time after the Investor Plaintiffs have obtained unconditional lawful permanent residence through the EB-5 program.