USCIS Ends Victorville CA's EB5 Immigrant Investor Program

Story re-posted from November 6, 2011 http://eb5news.com/categories/14-investigations/posts/170-uscis-ends-victorville-ca-s-eb5-immigrant-investor-program.

On October 20,2011 the federal government sent a final letter informing the Victorville Regional Center that it was pulling the plug on the regional center's ability to participate in the EB5 immigrant investor program. This comes after at least two other letters from USCIS to officials at the regional center detailing concerns over job creation methodology Victorville was using to justify its EB5 visa projects.
Approved by USCIS on June 19, 2009, Victorville received from the feds an unprecedented "Notice of Intent to Terminate" in May of this 2011. Among USCIS' chief concerns were changes made to the business plan for one of Victorville's projects, a wastewater treatment facility that would service a nearby Dr. Pepper-Snapple bottling plant.

Other EB5 visa projects in Victorville's pipeline also caused skepticism among USCIS officials, most notably construction of a power plant for which the city of Victorville defaulted on needed equipment costs and a railroad project that never came to fruition. In August,2011 the regional center received a second termination notice calling into question the jobs it was counting toward totals needed to satisfy USCIS requirements that 10 jobs be created per green card issued. It seems the regional center attempted to include jobs created at the bottling facility among its totals since the plant was a consumer of the service provided by the wastewater treatment utility--methodology ultimately deemed faulty by USCIS.

According to USCIS' second termination notice, "It would appear that your regional center asserts that any newly created public or private entity that provides a commodity or service to commercial consumers, such as a wastewater treatment plant, power plant, solid waste disposal center, etc., would in effect be able to claim credit for the jobs created by the commercial consumers of its services."
In light of continued requests that Victorville demonstrate it was able to raise money for its EB5 visa immigrant investor projects according to criteria approved by USCIS, city spokeswoman Mariana Gitmore told the Victorville Daily Press Tuesday that the regional center was unable to do so.

States

• California