EB-5 AS AN INSTRUMENT OF SUSTAINABLE CAPITALISM

This article proposes a targeted application of the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program to solve a heretofore intractable national problem: “nonpoint source water pollution,” which is the most significant single source of water pollution in the United States (U.S.). With this goal in mind, EB-5 can be cultivated and grown into a program, both ethical and pragmatic, that serves the public good via a mission to reclaim and restore a significant component of our environment.

The article provides the historic context, a legal précis, and an introduction to the process that is the EB-5 Program; explores the constitutional, ethical, and administrative dilemmas that plague the program; examines some notable successes; and proposes a systematic evolution of EB-5 for application in Vermont in the service of anticipatory regenerative environmental design, construction, and maintenance of sustainable development.

Thus matured, EB-5 becomes a financial “kick-start” for animating the laboratory of democracy that is Vermont, to begin a series of watershed specific research and development projects to conceive, design, and develop regenerative solutions to this perpetual problem.

A collateral virtue of this evolved EB-5 Program is that, while distinctly local to each watershed, the underlying concepts and best practices developed are eminently “scalable”—applicable throughout the United States and ultimately the world. Thus, investments made by immigrant investors in the U.S. may well end up serving the very countries from which their personal wealth was derived.