Earlier this year we wrote about a Florida-based EB-5 regional center that reported that its office in China was lodged in a Chinese City Hall, suggesting if not Chinese government ownership, then at least very solid ties to the government.
The regional center in the case, the Miami Chinatown Investment Group, had a flamboyant idea — they would create a second Hollywood on a piece of state-owned property in South Florida. Their China office was in the city hall in Chongqing (formerly Chungking), the WWII capital of Nationalist China.
USCIS is reluctant to close down regional centers, but did so in this case for presumably solid reasons, which are unknown at the moment.
This EB-5 problem is one of the many new ones that have been reported to us at the Center, following our publication of a map of the U.S. showing of all the known locations of EB-5 fraud and folly in the nation; the map will be updated soon to reflect additional entries.
(If you have insight to EB-5 visa fraud, let us know at [email protected] and please add "EB-5" to the subject heading.)