Director of the USCIS Alejandro Mayorkas met with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday to discuss reforming America's high skilled immigration system, competitiveness, and jobs. During the course of his presentation, Director Mayorkas pointed to changes in the EB-5 program which are expected to provide additional support for adjudicators and make the EB-5 process more efficient in the coming months. He also mentions a "targeted request for proposal to re-engineer our business process from beginning to end".
The comments, coupled with the fact that EB-5 is now being discussed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, provides a glimmer of hope that the policy changes advocated by Director Mayorkas will help to increase efficieny and reduce adjudication timelines for a variety of EB-5 related applications.
The full text of the Director's comments can be seen here:
"We have made significant changes in the way we adjudicate cases in the immigrant investor or EB-5 program, a program that is designed to create American jobs. We have retained business analysts to support our adjudicators, and received more than 75 applications for additional economists. We will be hiring corporate expertise, issuing new policy guidance in the next few weeks. And currently we have outstanding a targeted request for proposal to re-engineer our business process from beginning to end. The EB-5s full allotment of 10,000 investor visas has never been reached. In 2008, just over 1,200 were issued and the potential remains great. This year, we will more than triple that number."
Full text of Director Mayorkas' presentation to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce can be found here, as well:
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=25151&docId=l:1510562947&isRss=true&Em=4
