Public webinar on AIIA’s next phase of advocacy efforts

On Saturday, March 25th, AIIA hosted our first public webinar since the EB-5 program lapse. This webinar was a massive success, thanks to the hundreds of EB-5 investors and industry stakeholders who registered and attended the event with us. We are thrilled to have hosted such a successful engagement with the public, and are glad to see that investors are willing to step up to the plate to ask the right questions and challenge the current state of the EB-5 program.

For those who were unable to attend, we have recorded the webinar and posted it to our YouTube channel for all to see. We highly encourage anyone who will watch the recorded version to send us their questions and comments via our contact form.

During this webinar, we discussed the importance of addressing issues in the EB-5 world, including the notoriously slow processing of EB-5 petitions, the problem of the visa backlog, the status of sustainment periods in the aftermath of the RIA, the threat of redeployment for all investors, and of course, the astounding lack of transparency from USCIS.

This webinar addressed these issues as well as our plan to solve them, including: lobbying Congress to seek legislative solutions to these issues, forcing USCIS to fulfill their duty, recapturing lost visas, and shortening wait times. Furthermore, we hope to continue promoting transparency and accountability through our FOIA requests, suing the government agencies for failing to respond to our requests, joining investor mandamus cases as an amicus brief and educating investors about their immigration and investment rights as an EB-5 investor.

The visa backlog, for example, has left Indian and Chinese investors in the dark for too long about when they may be able to get their conditional green card, and the visa set-asides created by the RIA further exacerbates this issue. The speed of processing has exacerbated these issues, keeping approved I-526s waiting for open consular space for visa interviews and delaying the repayment of investments. This processing delay then allows investment issuers to reinvest investors’ hard earned capital over and over. These problems work in tandem to create a vicious cycle of stress, anxiety, unfairness, and financial strife for most EB-5 investors.