Washington Updates
The comment period for proposed EB-5 regulations closes on April 11, and the regional center program’s current authorization expires on April 28. Either of those immanent deadlines could be associated with significant EB-5 program changes, but I’m not hearing any confident predictions for what will happen exactly. Last week Senators Grassley and Leahy wrote a letter reacting against news that a couple lobbyists for large real estate developers may have recently agreed to “secret backroom deals to thwart reforms.” The senators promised to oppose any such deal, which would presumably protect investment amounts and TEA definitions from significant change, but have yet to reintroduce substantial EB-5 reform legislation of their own. And Congress has so much to do in the next month that one wonders whether our representatives can even agree on a plan to fund the government beyond April 28, much less figure out EB-5 changes. For other commentary on state of play in Washington, see for example posts from IIUSA and Wolfsdorf Law. (This is probably too unserious to even mention, but Representative Steve King of “other people’s babies” fame has introduced another bill, H.R.1502, proposing to repeal the EB-5 program entirely. I don’t see this particular bill going anywhere, not least because terrorist threats may be the one problem EB-5 does not have.)