Second FOIA Suit to Address Petition Denials

As part of AIIA’s effort effort to continue working towards addressing investor issues, we have now filed our second lawsuit against USCIS to compel them to hand over documents, memos and any records related to specific issues of concern for our investors – namely, arbitrary denials received by Vietnamese investors when transferring funds to the U.S. We appreciate the distinguished EB-5 attorney Matt Galati for taking on this lawsuit pro bono on behalf of all immigrant investors and EB-5 stakeholders who rightfully deserve an answer to how USCIS has changed their policies and why, given that the outcome of using these services may lead to a denial of an investor’s petition. 

In an earlier blog we discussed our investor outreach trip to Vietnam and the related FOIA that we have filed seeking to uncover USCIS’s methodology to evaluate source of funds involving currency swap transactions as denials associated with that issue seem to be disproportionately high for Vietnamese investors compared to other investors across the world. That FOIA was designed to obtain documents pertaining to the re-adjudication of Source of Funds (SOF) at the I-829 stage for petitions which used currency swaps to transfer funds out of the country, specifically for Vietnamese currency swaps. This third FOIA request follows our previous requests, which has so far given us policy manuals for USCIS officials specifically pertaining to re-adjudication Source of Funds at the I-829 stage as well as the latest known breakdown of pending I-526s by country. 

USCIS failed to respond to our request by the required date and has given us no indication that they have even begun conducting a search for these files. Therefore, we have employed the services of The Galati Law firm to file a lawsuit against USCIS in Washington D.C. to ensure these documents are delivered to us. 

In our opinion, USCIS must outline clear guidelines when it comes to legal use of currency swaps as an EB-5 investor’s path of funds. It is unacceptable to think that an agency such as USCIS would keep internal adjudication policies, such as those on adjudicating currency swap cases, hidden from public scrutiny. Not only is it unfair to the investor community who are forced to rely on currency swaps to move their hard earned capital into the U.S, but also inefficient for USCIS adjudicators, who must then issue denials on petitions which were not eligible from the very beginning. Now, after years of waiting in a backlog with atrociously slow processing times, investors have discovered that their applications are nearly guaranteed to receive an RFE, and even possibly a denial. 

To support these efforts and our other advocacy work, please consider donating to our cause or becoming a member of AIIA. As always, we love to hear from the EB-5 community so please reach out to us through our contact form.