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."