In a letter this month to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services director Alejandro Mayorkas said that the EB-5 Regional Center Program may rely on jobs "indirectly created outside its geographic boundaries."
The correspondence was a follow-up to a September letter Leahy wrote indicating he thought the business plan for a proposed regional center could include jobs created outside its boundaries. Mayorkas concurred and in the letter outlined USCIS's interpretation based on case law.
Mayorkas said the USCIS believes the businesses responsible for creating jobs must themselves be located within the regional center's boundaries. Also he said they agree a center's business plan must "clearly describe how the regional center focuses on a geographic region of the United States."
Their interpretation is that a EB-5 center "focus its capital investment activities on a single, contiguous area within the defined geographic jurisdiction requested by the center." But Mayorkas said the USCIS agrees with Leahy that it does not mean all indirect job creation from the center must take place within that jurisdiction.
And EB-5 is private or public economic unit eligible to receive capital from immigrant investors. They are involved with the creation of jobs and general economic growth.
