Originally published by Washington Examiner on November 30, 2019.
The struggle on immigration policy within the Trump administration and in the Republican Party is playing out right now. Congress is considering legislation to fix and improve the EB-5 investor visa program, while the Trump administration is allowing an anti-merit based regulatory sabotage of the program to go forward.
The EB-5 program allows wealthy foreigners to invest large amounts of cash currently sitting overseas into American real estate and infrastructure programs. It helps create jobs and expands the U.S. economy. Immigrants who increase the gross domestic product of the United States surely fall into the category of merit-based immigration. The Trump administration has repeatedly stated a desire to move toward a merit-based system that rewards those coming to the country with special skills or a capacity to make America better.
Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., are pushing the Immigrant Investor Reform Act, a bill that addresses the concerns of EB-5 investor visa program’s critics. One faction that has pushed back on the program comes from states with large rural populations, who have felt overlooked by the structure of this program. The drafters have therefore struck a balance intended to ensure program benefits are spread out well between city and country.
One of the most important elements of the legislation is simple backlog relief. The 30,000 pending applications will be expedited, removing a bureaucratic logjam that has stifled the program and discouraged new investors in eligible projects.
One challenge to the program is an Obama administration midnight regulation, implemented by the Trump administration this month. The rule, crafted by elements of the Obama administration that see merit-based immigration as unfair, was clearly intended to sabotage the program. But with the Trump administration’s most restrictionist wing looking for any way to lower the top line numbers of legal immigrants, this merit-based program is under threat of constriction for all the wrong reasons.
The EB-5 program has been wildly successful in creating jobs and bringing in foreign investment. A study from 2018 authored by the American Action Forum found that it had increased foreign investment in the United States by at least $20 billion since 2008. A more recent report from earlier this year, put together by the Economic & Policy Resources, found “a total of $10.98 billion in capital investment was made through the Regional Center program during FY2014 and FY2015 using IIUSA’s EB-5 Regional Center project data,” including “Hotels and Motels (at an estimated $1.05 billion), Real Estate (at an estimated $0.53 billion), Wholesale Trade (at an estimated $0.5 billion), Architecture, Engineering and Related Services (at an estimated $0.41 billion), and healthcare (at an estimated $0.35 billion).”
The weight of the evidence shows massive job creation and projects built that would never have existed but for the EB-5 program.
The strong opposition to the Jan. 13, 2017, Obama administration Notice of Proposed Rulemaking came from former Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., in addition to Cornyn and Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. These four sent a letter on July 3, 2017, asking then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly to halt implementation of the Obama-era regulation. For some reason, the Trump administration has instead embraced this sabotage of the only immigration program that both creates American jobs while bringing in billions in foreign investment.
With the widespread criticism that the Republican Party has lurched towards a dangerous version of nationalism, it makes sense to defy the stereotype and embrace opportunities to improve overall immigration policy by shifting more slots over to merit-based programs like this one. The EB-5 investor visa program is thus something that conservatives should support.
President Trump has voiced strong support for merit-based immigration, and this program fits the bill. It brings in immigrants to invest in the U.S. economy rather than to compete for American jobs. Attracting the world’s best is a firmly American immigration idea that will expand the economy at a time when we desperately need to get away from government stimulus and move toward using real wealth to create jobs and true growth.
———
Image credit: Bjoertvedt | CC BY-SA 3.
