Published on 03/29/2016
Hello, I’m investment immigration attorney Vaughan de Kirby based here in San Francisco. This is a very important video, and it covers two different listeners. No.1, if you’re an applicant for EB-5, you will be filing what’s called an 829. An 829 is basically the application for the removal of the conditions on your Green Card. If you’re a migration agent, this is also for you, because it’s an important procedure that you should be insisting upon with the law firms that you may work with. If you’re an attorney representing EB-5 clients, this is also important for you, because there have been some changes and you need to be aware of them. Late last year, the 829 form was changed, and USCIS will no longer accept the previous form, so that means every 829 applicant must adhere to the new form. Let me cut now to the language in the form and we’ll go over it and why it is significant.
The page you see on your screen is a new attestation by the person filing the 829. When I say the person filing the 829, I’m referring to the preparer’s signature. In every case, this is going to be the investment immigration attorney. The change that we see is that the investment immigration attorney is going to be signing under penalty of perjury that they have reviewed the entire form with the applicant, and that you, or your client has agreed that every answer in the petition is correct. This means that no 829 can be filed unless you’re speaking directly with the preparer who is the attorney. This is very important because many people in various countries use a professional such as a migration agent to help them in the EB-5 process. Many of the migration agents work directly with attorneys in the United States such as our firm. We must now require that we speak directly with the applicant and go over the 829. This is a very important part of the process, and you need to understand the history.
The EB-5 Program is somewhat controversial. There’s lots of concern out there that applications being filed by third parties are not being properly reviewed. In earlier videos, I mentioned to you that the various agencies of the US government are now communicating very well. And if you’ve made an application before, they will be reviewing that application, even if it’s not part of your EB-5 application, but in this instance, they have made it very clear that not only are they going to hold the investor responsible for the contents of the 829, they’re asking the attorneys that file those applications to adhere to a very strict procedure and actually sign it under penalty of perjury. Now what this means to you, if you’re a client, you should make certain that if you’re working with an attorney, that attorney reviews the application with you, because that attorney should not be signing this unless they follow the directions of this paragraph that you’ve seen on screen. If you’re a migration agent, and you’re working with a law firm in the United States, you should make certain that you adopt the procedure with the law firm where that law firm is interviewing your investor directly. This is very important. Any attorney that is not doing this is violating the law, because they’d be signing under penalty of perjury and they would not have done the application, the 829 correctly. If you’re a client, you want to make sure it happens. If you’re an attorney, you want to make sure you follow this procedure, because it is very important. It’s very important to all of us that we have the EB-5 program that has the integrity that it was designed to have and this is an aspect.
If you have questions on this, please feel free to contact our office or call 415-221-2345, I’ll be happy to review it with you, discuss the procedure that we’re going to use to adhere to this requirement. And I hope this video was helpful to you.
