In today’s EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Listening Session:
IPO Chief Sarah Kendall made a statement that sounded promising in outline (IPO Overview, IPO updates, and comments on implementation of the proposed rule) but that proved insubstantial and unhelpful in fact. The statement was in very general terms, with no specific answers to the specific questions that I at least submitted in advance. Even the single data point — that IPO has 212 dedicated staff as of July 2019 — was unhelpful as Kendall never specified whether these staffs is actually working on EB-5, or among those on “temporary assignment to other agency priorities.” The statement then wasted time by regurgitating what’s written in the regulation without telling us anything specific about how IPO interprets or plans to implement the regulation. This ungenerous statement will eventually get posted online.