EB-5 program just not right

Few things are more popular on Capitol Hill these days than posturing about the issue of immigration reform.
One version of comprehensive reform has passed the Senate, but it’s not going anywhere in the House.
Instead, the issue is just something to talk about on the Sunday TV yak-fest or mention in chicken dinner speeches back home while endlessly campaigning.
Republicans play to their base. Democrats play to theirs.
But key members of both parties are on record supporting something called EB-5.
And for that they should all be ashamed.
If you’ve never heard of EB-5, you are not alone. It’s a visa classification created back in 1990 with bipartisan support.
Under the EB-5 visa program, so-called “immigrant investors” can get a green card — the key bit of paperwork to stay legally in this country as an immigrant non-citizen — if they invest $1 million in the U.S.
The price tag for legal immigration status is lower when it comes to “targeted employment areas,” rural areas with historically high unemployment, like much of east central Indiana. In those cases, all the “immigrant investor” has to do is plunk down half a million dollars to create — or preserve, an important distinction — 10 jobs.
If this sounds like a slick method to buy your way into the United States, that’s because it is.
There’s a lot of rhetoric these days about wanting highly skilled immigrants, but the fact is the rules are tilted toward the well-heeled rather than the highly skilled.
And as to those folks who are simply trying to better their lives and the lives of their families, they’re viewed as the problem, not as a business opportunity.
In her immortal poem “The New Colossus,” which marks the Statue of Liberty, Emma Lazarus said, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
She didn’t mention a word about being able to pony up a million bucks for a green card.
Our guess is she’d say the whole concept smells. And she would be right. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]