When Will America End Immigration Cash-for-Visas Racket?

This may be the first and last time I ever write these words: America, follow Canada.

Our neighbors to the north finally have wised up to the international cash-for-visas scam. The country recently ended its foreign investor program that put residency up for sale to the highest bidder. We should have done the same a long time ago.

Canada’s Immigrant Investor Program granted permanent residency to wealthy foreigners who forked over 800,000 Canadian dollars for a five-year, zero-interest loan to one of the country’s provinces. The scheme turned out to be a magnet for tens of thousands of millionaires from Hong Kong and China. But as the Canadian Ministry of Finance concluded in its annual budget report this year, the program “undervalued Canadian permanent residence" and showed "little evidence that immigrant investors as a class are maintaining ties to Canada or making a positive economic contribution to the country.”...

I’ve been issuing the very same warnings about America’s EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, created under an obscure section of the 1990 Immigration Act, for more than a decade. The details of the U.S. program vary, but the facade is the same: trading residency on the cheap for the shady promise of economic development. Just as in Canada, the U.S. racket’s alleged economic benefits are largely hype.

Who has profited? As I’ve reported previously, the real winners are former federal immigration officials who formed lucrative limited partnerships to cash in on their access and politically connected cronies. An internal Justice Department investigative report revealed years ago that “aliens were paying $125K” instead of the required $500,000 to $1 million minimum, and “almost all of the monies went to the general partners and the companies who set up the limited partners.”...

Recklessly peddling foreign investor visas for the precious privilege of entry into our country is bad for our sovereignty, bad for workers and good for corruptocrats. Moreover, history shows that government is always bad at picking economic winners and losers. If Canada can come to its senses on this, why not America?

CAIRCO Notes

Michelle Malkin was CAIRCO's keynote speaker at our 2003 debate: The Mexican matricula consular ID card: safe or sorry?