Over the weekend, the NYT reported on a federal visa program that allows up to 10,000 immigrant investors to qualify for a green card. The program is called EB-5. From the Times:
Under the federal program, a foreigner who invests $500,000…in a project that will create at least 10 jobs can apply for a green card.
In FY 2010, 1,885 EB-5 visas were issued. But by 2014, the entire annual allotment of 10,000 visas had been claimed by August, 4 months before the end of the fiscal year. This year, the quota was reached on May 1. More from the NYT:
Under the program, the family of the investor, including any dependent under 21, can apply for a green card, and each family member is counted toward the quota.
Critics have called the program a “scam” that essentially sells green cards to the affluent and their families. More than 80% of those in the program are from China. Critics clearly have sympathy with the vast amount of people who desperately read each and every Visa Bulletin in the hope that the results will bring them one step closer to permanent residency in the United States.
The EB-5 program was canceled in 1998 for three years because it was seen as corrupt. With $500k as the cost of entry, the US is one of the cheapest developed countries in which to get an investor visa. And the Department of Homeland Security isn’t coordinating with Immigration and Naturalization on these green cards, so there is opportunity for fraud and there are security concerns, it’s also unfair to those that have to legitimately renew green card dates that don’t have to luxury of being able to basically buy it.
Finally, one of our more anti-immigration Republican presidential candidates, Scott Walker (R-WI), makes an exception for the EB-5 visa. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (JS) reports that Walker is prominently featured on the website of FirstPathway Partners, a Milwaukee firm that helps foreigners find EB-5 opportunities. The JS reported that Our American Revival, a Walker for president organization said:
The Governor is a proponent of immigration that is supportive of the nation’s economic needs, our working families, and wages. But the system is broken and we need to review the current immigration system to ensure we are achieving those goals
Let’s see that check. OK, now move to the head of the line, sir. Why not make the cost of entry $5 million, and sell green cards to 100,000 a year?
We could begin to put a dent in the deficit.
Today’s Links:
FBI claims hacker took control of plane. They say a hacker admitted that he used his laptop to gain access to the in-flight entertainment system on a United 737, and then overwrote the code on the airplane’s Thrust Management Computer. He and the company he works for, One World Labs, have for some time nagged Airbus and Boeing about how easy it is to connect a laptop to a box beneath an airline seat and access the plane’s systems. The thought that someone could be on a plane and hack in and control it, should make airplane manufacturers panic. But apparently, they are not panicked enough to hire One World Labs!
The FBI spent two years trying to learn the lyrics to “Louie, Louie”. You know the song. You probably think the lyrics are indecipherable. After Robert Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover received letters saying that the song was “dirty”, the FBI tried to figure out whether the recording included vulgar variations on the published lyrics. The FBI played the record repeatedly, but concluded what everyone else already knew: the lyrics are indecipherable. It took nearly two years for someone at the FBI to think: Isn’t this song registered at the Copyright Office? Maybe we could send someone over there to find out what they think it says? This is one bizarre story of moralism, FBI and governmental overreach, plus, an attack on the First Amendment.
B.B. King: Generations of guitarists used B.B’s “Box”, a fingering technique to learn how to play. With virtually no knowledge of musical theory, guitarists can use the B.B. Box position to pluck out a solo that will work for most blues and rock chord progressions. To change keys, you simply move the position up or down the neck. No need for effects pedals for B.B. He came out of the Mississippi Delta, where guitarists learned their craft by watching other players, so no music theory, maybe not even knowledge of scales: just go on and make the guitar sound as sad as the blues they wanted to sing. RIP Mr. King!
Here is a spectacular National Geographic video of Mobula Rays off the coast in the Sea of Cortez. They breech the water and seem to fly:
They congregate once a year. Maybe it’s Spring Break for Rays. For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.
We see a number of those who purchase visas. They also buy US insurance policies (and then claim the policy face amount as a US asset). I have a hard time trusting these folks. And worse, it may be that a few are corrupt officials on the lam.
Re Louie Louie.. this came out when i was young enough that i might spend hours re-playing a 45 and trying to make sense of the words. Procul Harum was just as bad.