EB-5 Program Treated Ever So Gently by GAO

Generally, the reports of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) are filled with endless numbers and specific suggestions for program reform, if need be.

These statements, however, do not apply to its latest report on the scandal-ridden EB-5 (immigrant investor) program. This is the program that provides a family-sized set of green cards to aliens who put $800,000 into investments in the U.S. economy, usually managed by others. Congress recently put most of the program on hold for more than nine months until it could come up with a reform package.

There have been many scandals as U.S. citizens, usually of the same ancestry as the investors, have stolen the funds of the would-be investors.
GAO, to its credit, in its one-page summary of the document, states:

USCIS does not collect data on the reasons for (1) denying EB-5 petitions and applications and (2) terminating Regional Centers. Developing a process to collect and assess these reasons would provide USCIS with valuable insight into program risks.

In other words, if you do not know why some of your decisions fail, you are likely to keep making the same mistakes.

Good advice, but the GAO is all too timid when it comes to analyzing the activities of USCIS in regard to EB-5; it apparently has lots of data but refuses to use it, on the grounds of “sensitivity”, as it says in one of its many footnotes, No. 99.

Let’s look at the blandest of numbers, the number of middleman regional centers per state. On p. 31 of the report, we see “Figure 6: Number of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Regional Centers Approved to Operate by State and Territory, as of June 30, 2021.

https://cis.org/North/EB5-Program-Treated-Ever-So-Gently-GAO