Investor immigrants are lucrative criminals seeking refuge ?
The program, called EB-5, allows wealthy foreign investors, for a price ranging from $500,000 to more than $1 million, to put themselves on a path to United States citizenship. The money must be used to finance a business in this country and eventually employ -- directly or indirectly -- at least 10 American workers in economically depressed areas.
But EB-5 has been the subject of increasing scrutiny since investigators uncovered numerous cases of fraud, discovered individuals with possible ties to Chinese and Iranian intelligence using fake documents and learned that international fugitives who have laundered money had infiltrated the program.
"It's no secret that the program has long been riddled with corruption and national security vulnerabilities," said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and a frequent critic of the program.
A number of Democrats echo his criticism, in large part because while most visa applicants must meet education or work requirements, the primary requirement for the EB-5 program is a "lawful source of investment income," one Department of Homeland Security memo said.
"I don't believe that America should be selling visas and eventually citizenship," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who wants to terminate a part of the program that allows foreign applicants to invest through regional development centers that pool investor money. "The right to immigrate should not be for sale."
A Government Accountability Office report released in August found that the agency could not be sure that money used for the visas was not coming from "the drug trade, human trafficking or other criminal activities."