STEP 8 - Compile Personal Information and Documentation

In addition to information about your investment, the U.S. government requires personal documentation for you and your family, to be certain that you are indeed who you say you are before they give you a Green Card. This documentation takes many forms, as you will find outlined in the guide to documentation later in this book. As your Investment Immigration Attorneys, we will work with you to identify those items of personal documentation that will be necessary in your particular case.

STEP 9: The Law Offices of Vaughan de Kirby Files an I-526 petition for Work Alien Entrepreneur with USCIS

 At this point, we are ready to prepare and file your I-526 petition with USCIS. In addition to the petition itself, there are two critical pieces of the application. First will be the extensive personal and investment funds documentation that you have compiled. The second critical piece will be provided by the regional center, fully documenting their regional center and their projects. The regional center plays a very important role in your application and are firmly committed to your success.

STEP 6: Transfer the Necessary Funds to the Regional Center

If you elect to invest in a regional center that offers to hold you funds in escrow, this means that your investment is placed with a third party banking institution that agrees to hold your funds until your application has been approved. In the very unlikely event that your application is denied, all of your money–the $500,000 investment and the service fee–is refunded to you. Your only cost would be the bank administrative fee, which is typically less than $500.00. My firm will not accept you as a client, and the regional center will not accept your investment, unless we are confident that you will be successful.

STEP 7: Compile Documentation of the Source of Investment Funds

The United States government requires that all funds invested in the EB-5 program be clearly traceable to their lawful source. As your immigration attorneys, we will work closely with you to help you identify and compile the documentation necessary to meet the lawful source requirement.

STEP 4: Sign a Nondisclosure Agreement

Once you have retained my firm, we will arrange for the regional center to forward to us a nondisclosure agreement. The nondisclosure agreement is mutual–it‘s meant to protect both your privacy and the privacy of the regional center. By signing this document, you are agreeing not to disclose to anyone other than your immediate family or your financial advisor any of the private financial and procedural information that the regional center will provide you. At the same time, this agreement also guarantees that the regional center will not release any of your personal information.

STEP 5: Review the Regional Center Offering Documents with Your Financial Advisor 

As your immigration attorneys we cannot serve as your financial advisors. Your investment with the regional center is a significant one, and we feel it should be made with the care that you would exercise in making any investment of this size. If you and your financial advisor determine with independent due diligence that the regional center is an appropriate investment for you, my firm will be ready to help you achieve your goal of an EB‑5 Green Card.

If after reviewing the  offering documents you decide that this is not the right investment for you, my firm will charge you NO FEE. I firmly believe that this is the way that attorneys and regional centers should do business. You should not incur costs and fees unless you decide to take advantage of this opportunity.

 If you decide to proceed, you are ready to begin making your investment.

Retain the Law Offices of Vaughan de Kirby, APC

By signing a retainer agreement with my firm, you are authorizing us to contact the regional center on your behalf and request that they provide you and your financial advisors with complete financial information for careful review. These comprehensive financial materials will enable you and your financial advisor to fully evaluate the regional center from an investment perspective. My firm still charges no fee at this point. We do not wish to collect an attorney fee until you have made your decision to move forward with your EB-5 application by investing in the regional center. 

On Tuesday, May 19, an appeals court judge in Orange County, California will decide whether to release key documents to the lawyers representing a young boy who was severely burned at the hands of a faulty Coleman heater. This decision could prove pivotal in the case, in which the victim’s attorneys are arguing that Coleman knowingly violate California law by packaging one of their heaters in a way that suggested it could be used indoors.  On December 30, 2005, Trevor Dennis and his parents were camping at the Octillo Welles Desert Recreation area in southern California. That evening, Trevor was in the camping trailer alone when the heater — a Model 5053 ProCat™ PerfectTemp™ – exploded, causing severe burns over much of Trevor’s body.

“This appears to be a case of the manufacturer using faulty design, subpar critical parts and inadequate quality control leading to the catastrophic injury of a then seven-year-old boy,” said Orange County personal injury lawyer John Bisnar, founding partner of the Bisnar/Chase law firm. 

“When the family bought the heater, it was packaged in a box showing its use in a house with a mom holding a baby on her lap,” noted Brian Chase, a parter at Bisnar/Chase. “The statute clearly states that nonvintage portable heaters cannot be sold for use indoors. On the side of the box, and on the top of the box, the copy indicated it was safe for home use.”

STEP  2 – Fill Out the Qualifying Questionnaire

If you decide, after consulting with my firm, that the regional center you’ve selected appears to be the best option for you to pursue your financial and immigration goals, we will work with you to complete the  investor questionnaire. This questionnaire will help my firm and the regional center determine that you are a qualified investor, both from a financial and a legal standpoint. Once you have completed the questionnaire, and once the regional center and my firm have reviewed it carefully, we will be ready to proceed to the next step.

Step 1 – Schedule a consultation with Vaughan de Kirby. 

Finding a qualified immigration investment attorney is paramount. The EB-5 program is one of the most complex areas of immigration law, and one that requires real expertise. Let’s say that you decide to contact my law firm to schedule a consultation. In our consultation, we will meet and review in detail the legal requirements of the EB-5 visa and discuss the possibility of applying for an investor Green Card. We will review your personal immigration needs to make certain that the EB-5 visa is both a viable option and indeed the best vehicle to reach your personal immigration goals, for yourself and your family. My law firm understands how important this decision is, and we are committed to equipping you with the knowledge to make the most informed decision possible. Because my firm is committed to ensuring that all our clients are well informed, we charge no fee for this consultation. 

In essence, the way the EB-5 program works is simple: the applicant and the applicant’s immediate family receive immigration benefits for making an investment of $500,000 in the U.S. economy. I want to be clear: this isn’t buying a Green Card; it doesn’t mean handing over half a million dollars to the U.S. government. Investments under the EB-5 program are made in for-profit businesses in the Untied States, with the possibility for a return on investment. The major requirement of the program is that the investment must create 10 jobs. 

In my experience, there are two concerns that stand out in the minds of immigrant investors: the success of their application an the security of their investment.

The arrangement of escrow, offered by a few regional centers–NobleOutreach and CMB Export among them–goes a long way towards answering both of these concerns.

No EB-5 applicant wants to make the required investment, see it lose value, and then have their Green Card application denied. Escrow ensures that this could never happen.

If you are not familiar with the term, escrow is a legal arrangement according to which a person‘s assets can be held by a trusted third party–often a bank–until the terms of an contract are satisfied, at which point the third party will transfer the assets to whomever the contract designates. In other words, the EB-5 investor signs a contract with the regional center, which says that, once the investor‘s I-526 application is approved in the United States, the funds will be transferred to the regional center and fully invested in the approved business enterprise. If, on the other hand, USCIS denies the application, the funds will be returned to the investor.

One of the best things about this arrangement is that it still satisfies the “at risk” requirement of the EB-5 program. For the investors who work with a regional center that offers escrow, this makes for a more secure application process.

Currently, a federal agency called “USCIS“ is in charge of administering the EB-5 visa program. USCIS stands for “United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.“ It is one of the United States‘ current immigration agencies.

The former U.S. immigration agency, the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services), no longer exists. After September 11th, the U.S. government underwent a significant restructuring in an effort to more efficiently combat terrorism and ensure preparedness for natural disasters.

This restructuring created an entirely new department of the federal government: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In March of 2003, the Department of Homeland Security absorbed the former INS and split its responsibilities between two new agencies: the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (USICE) and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

From a certain perspective, dividing the functions of immigration enforcement and administering programs like EB-5 between different agencies makes sense. They require two very different mentalities. The goal of the EB-5 program, after all, is about bringing qualified investors into the United States, rather than keeping illegal immigrants out.

When these functions were combined under the former INS, it had a fairly predictable result. The requirements of the EB-5 were made more difficult to satisfy and, as a consequence, it was harder for foreigners to get a visa and the program failed to strengthen the economy to the degree that U.S. lawmakers had hoped.

Fortunately, qualified foreign investors now have a fair, flexible path to permanent residency.