GT Immigration & Compliance Practice Co-Chair Kate Kalmykov spoke during a recent webinar on the EB-5 industry’s future, explaining that changes to the RIA to tighten oversight of regional centers have contributed to rising costs for operators. These comments are referenced in a Nov. 21 Law360 article, “EB-5 Experts Eyeing 4 Suits For Needed
Kate Kalmykov, co-chair of GT’s Global Immigration & Compliance Practice, spoke on the “Securing EB-5’s Future Webinar: How Will Pending Litigation Impact the Industry?” hosted by JTC Nov. 20, 2024.
Over the past year, regional centers and industry organizations have filed lawsuits in response to several changes to the EB-5 program. Panelists discussed the
On May 8, 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Senate Bill (SB) 264 relating to interests of foreign countries. The new law, effective July 1, 2023, generally restricts the issuance of state-level government contracts or economic development incentives to, or real property ownership by certain individuals and entities associated with foreign “countries of
GT’s Immigration & Compliance litigation team secured a mandamus victory in federal court for a long-pending Petition by an Investor to Remove Conditions on Permanent Resident Status (Form I-829) case. In the recent win, a Mainland-China-born EB-5 investor filed the I-829 with USCIS in April 2020, and as of February 2023, USCIS had failed to
Update: The Judge approved the settlement Thursday, Sept. 1.
The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act (RIA) was passed on March 11, 2022. USCIS then posted an interpretation of the legislation that would nullify all 600-plus designated regional centers and require all entities to be re-designated in order to be authorized to file petitions under the
On March 11, 2022, Congress passed the “EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act” as part of the Omnibus spending bill. See blog post here. On April 11, 2022, USCIS posted an interpretation of the legislation that would nullify all 600-plus designated regional centers and require all entities to be re-designated in order to be authorized
As discussed on this blog previously, a lawsuit challenging certain EB-5 regulations was successful on June 22, as Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the regulations were not lawfully promulgated because then-acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Kevin McAleenan was not
In April 2021, USCIS approved the I-526 Petition of Huashan Zhang, a Chinese national who had appealed the denial of his EB-5 petition under USCIS’s recent “Loan Proceeds Policy,” which was invalidated by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Oct. 27, 2020. In a break from previous interpretation, USCIS’s recent
Based on a recent hearing in a lawsuit challenging certain EB-5 regulations, it appears the regulations may be struck down due to the illegal appointment of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretaries by the Trump Administration.[1] Enacted on Nov. 21, 2019, the regulations at issue had increased investment amounts from $500,000 to $900,000 for
EB-5 investors achieved a victory in their continuous efforts against lengthy USCIS processing times for I-526 petitions in Gutta v. Renaud. This lawsuit establishes precedent for EB-5 mandamus cases with the decision that unreasonably long processing times were in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Almost two dozen EB-5 investors coming from a