How the jobless rate in poor Jersey City areas helped the Kushners

Higher unemployment rates in Jersey City's southern neighborhoods helped Kushner Companies use a controversial visa program to obtain overseas investment for their luxury high-rise projects, according to a longtime observer of the visa program.

Norman Oder, writing for City & State, reports that Kushner Companies, run by the family of presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, was able to use the higher unemployment rates in Greenville and  Bergen-Lafayette to qualify for a $500,000-a-visa federal program intended to help projects in "target employment areas," places with high unemployment.

The EB-5 investor visa system allows investors seeking green cards to get one if they put $500,000 into a project in an area of high unemployment. The locations of two Kushner Companies projects -- Trump Bay Street and One Journal Square -- only qualify when jobless rates in neighborhoods as far south as the Curries Woods public-housing complex are included, Oder reports.

"This gerrymandering makes a mockery of the philosophy behind the targeted employment areas: to direct jobs to those who need them," Oder says. "However, most states welcome EB-5 investments; with no direct local cost, there's little incentive for integrity."

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2017/05/how_high_unemployment_in_poor_areas_of_jersey_city.html

Mentions

• U.S. Immigration Fund - NJ
• 88 KUSHNER-KABR (Trump Bay Street)
• One Journal Square (EB-5 Not Used)

States

• New Jersey