Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Whistleblowers, Watch Your Back

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This tells me it is official cover for Hillary. What are your thoughts?

U.S. Government Seeking New Top Secret Classification Czar

FreeBeacon: The Obama administration is seeking to hire a new information security director who will be responsible for overseeing the classification and declassification on all sensitive U.S. government information, according to a posting on the government’s jobs website.

The administration wants to fill the post of director in the National Archive’s Information Security Oversight Office. The previous director, John Fitzpatrick, left the job in January.

The director holds one of the most powerful and sensitive national security jobs in the U.S. government. The official has authority over many classification and declassification matters, meaning that he or she could potentially remove classification if it is deemed in violation of policies.

The post is not subject to confirmation by Congress.

The new director can make up to $185,000 a year.

***** Implications already realized?

 

Intel Whistle-Blowers Fear Government Won’t Protect Them

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Bloomberg: Nearly three years after Edward Snowden bypassed the intelligence community’s own process for reporting wrongdoing and leaked troves of classified documents to Glenn Greenwald, the system for protecting whistle-blowers inside the national security state remains broken.

This is the view of current and former intelligence officials, national security lawyers and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Their message is simple: Whistle-blowers are often too intimidated to take their case to the inspectors general and Congress.

“There is a systemic problem with the whistle-blower process,” Representative Devin Nunes told me. “There is no easy way for them to come forward that doesn’t jeopardize their careers, across the whole defense and intelligence community enterprise.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has in the past two years tried to address this problem, with mixed results at best. Dan Meyer, the executive director of the Intelligence Community’s Whistle-Blowing & Source Protection program, said in a statement that more whistle-blowers were coming forward in the last two years since the intelligence community began implementing a 2012 executive order from President Barack Obama that gave them additional protections. He said his office was also doing more, for example, to educate agencies on the new law and regulation.

Meyer conceded, however, there were holes in the process. “Protections are imperfect given their differences, the most notable being the lack of equivalent laws protecting intelligence community contractors from reprisal actions by the private companies employing them,” he said. He also acknowledged: “There will likely be some reluctance on the part of whistle-blowers to come forward. In our experience, this is understandably a very emotional event in someone’s career given what’s at stake.”

Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who has represented dozens of whistle-blowers over the last two decades, went further. “I have not seen any noticeable improvement in the ability of a national security whistle-blower to come forward and be confident they will be protected,” he told me.

Snowden himself has said that he went to the press because of the experience of whistle-blowers before him. Specifically, he has talked about Thomas Drake, a former official at the National Security Agency. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Drake tried to warn his superiors and other oversight bodies of what he saw as a wasteful and illegal NSA program, known as “Trailblazer,” to collect personal data from digital networks.

For Drake, the system didn’t work. Out of frustration, he eventually leaked what he has says was unclassified information about the program to the Baltimore Sun. The Justice Department prosecuted him in 2010, but dropped his case the following year. His career was ruined.

A staff member on the House Intelligence Committee who took Drake seriously, Diane Rourke, soon found she too was under investigation. She told me that because of her interest in Drake’s complaints, and lobbying within the system on his behalf, the Justice Department and eventually her own committee put her under the microscope.

“They wanted to ruin our lives and make an example out of us to anyone else in the intelligence community,” she told me, even though she said she never took Drake’s complaints to the press.

Speaking anonymously, other U.S. intelligence officials told me analysts often face milder forms of intimidation if they are suspected of talking to Congress. This includes threats to suspend one’s security clearance, or being deliberately kept out of loop on important programs.

At issue is anonymity. The inspector general for the intelligence community is required by law to tell the Office of the Director of National Intelligence the identities of whistle-blowers that seek to speak with Congress. The DNI office has also bolstered its monitoring of intelligence professionals and their browsing habits on classified computer systems since the first mass disclosures by WikiLeaks in 2010.

Congress and others have adjusted. Nunes told me he has found creative ways for intelligence professionals to get him information. One was through an annual survey provided to intelligence analysts on the integrity of their product.

At a hearing last month Nunes disclosed that 40 percent of analysts at U.S. Central Command, or CentCom, who responded to the survey complained their reports on the Islamic State were skewed by higher-ups to make the U.S.-led campaign seem more effective than it really was. (The Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Glenn Fine, is also looking into these claims).

Nunes said analysts filled out extensive comments in response to the survey describing how their work was politicized, with the intention of getting them to the committee. Yet Nunes is still trying to get those in-depth comments from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

While some analysts at Central Command have gone directly to the inspector general at the Pentagon (who declined to comment for this column), Nunes said there were many more at CentCom who did not want to risk potential retribution and file a formal complaint.

Nunes also said intelligence officials who have helped his investigation into cost-padding for the construction of a new Joint Intelligence Analysis Center in Europe have been too intimidated to go through the formal whistle-blower process.

It’s understandable that lawmakers like Nunes would raise concerns about weak protections for whistle-blowers. His committee is supposed to perform oversight, even though his predecessors have not made this an issue.

But fixing the system is also in the interest of the national security state itself. In the last five years, the intelligence community has invested great resources to protect its secrets from the next mega-leaker. But if whistle-blowers inside the system see no recourse to address legitimate grievances, then the intelligence community should brace itself for more Snowdens.

IAEA Obstructed from Reporting Iran Violations

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 Hey  you have a call holding on line 3.

IAEA: Iran Nuke Deal Limits Public Reporting on Possible Violations

Nuclear watchdog says deal limits agency oversight

FreeBeacon: The head of the international community’s nuclear watchdog organization disclosed Monday that certain agreements reached under the Iran nuclear deal limit inspectors from publicly reporting on potential violations by the Islamic Republic.

Yukiya Amano, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, which is responsible for ensuring Iran complies with the agreement, told reporters that his agency is no longer permitted to release details about Iran’s nuclear program and compliance with the deal.

Amano’s remarks come on the heels of a February IAEA oversight report that omitted many details and figures related to Iran’s nuclear program. The report sparked questions from outside nuclear experts and accusations from critics that the IAEA was not being transparent with its findings.

Amano disclosed in response to questions from reporters that the last report was intentionally vague because the nuclear agreement prohibits the IAEA from publishing critical data about Iran’s program that had been disclosed by the agency in the past.

“The misunderstanding is that the basis of reporting is different,” Amano said. “In the previous reports, the bases were the previous [United Nations] Security Council Resolutions and Board of Governors. But now they are terminated. They are gone.”

Most U.N. measures pertaining to Iran—including its military buildup and illicit work on nuclear technology—were removed following the nuclear agreement, which essentially rewrote the organization’s overall approach to the country.

The IAEA, which operates under the U.N. umbrella, must now follow the new resolutions governing the implementation of the nuclear pact, Amano said.

“These two resolutions and the other resolutions of the Security Council and Board are very different,” he said. “And as the basis is different, the consequences are different.”

Amano said that going forward, the agency would only release reports that are consistent with the most recent Security Council resolutions on Iran, meaning that future reports are likely to impact the international community’s ability to determine if Iran is fully complying with its end of the agreement.

Last month’s report was viewed as particularly significant because it allowed the nuclear agreement to proceed to its implementation stage. However, the dearth of information in it has angered some experts.

The latest report “provides insufficient details on important verification and monitoring issues,” Olli Heinonen, the IAEA’s former deputy director general, stated in a policy brief.

“The report does not list inventories of nuclear materials and equipment or the status of key sites and facilities,” Heinonen said in his analysis, which was published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Without detailed reporting, the international community cannot be sure that Iran is upholding its commitments under the nuclear deal.”

The IAEA’s latest report also failed to disclose information about Iran’s stockpiles of low-enriched uranium, which is supposed to be significantly reduced as part of the nuclear deal.

Additional information about Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, the machines responsible for enriching uranium, also was withheld by the IAEA.

Other critics accused the Obama administration of misleading Congress during negotiations over the deal. White House officials maintained at the time that the agreement would provide increased transparency into Iran’s nuclear endeavors.

“When nuclear negotiations began in late 2013, the administration asked Congress to stand down on pressuring the Iranians, and promised to force the Iranians to dismantle significant parts of their nuclear program if Congress gave negotiators space,” Omri Ceren, an official with The Israel Project, which works with Congress on the Iran issue, wrote in an analysis sent to reporters on Monday.

“U.S. negotiators eventually caved on any demands that would have required the destruction of Iran’s uranium infrastructure, and instead went all-in on verification and transparency: Yes, the Iranians would get to keep what they’d built, and yes, their program would eventually be fully legal, but the international community would have full transparency into everything from uranium mining to centrifuge production to enriched stockpiles,” Ceren explained.

However, “now Amano has revealed that the nuclear deal gutted the ability of journalists and the public to have insight into Iran’s nuclear activities,” he said. “In critical areas, it’s not even clear that the IAEA has been granted the promised access.”

****

What else does Kerry know about Iran and their history?

Fresh evidence emerging of Iran’s deadly nuclear and terror ties to Argentina

Amb. Noriega: Last week, an Argentine intelligence official testified that Iran sought nuclear technology from that South American country and that a prosecutor investigating suspected Hezbollah bombings in Buenos Aires had been murdered for attempting to expose Tehran’s dangerous plot.

This fresh testimony supports reports I published in July 2011 regarding suspicious nuclear diplomacy in 2007 and a massive cash transfer in 2010 involving then Iranian and Argentine leaders, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Nestor Kirchner, respectively. Despite congressional inquiries and mounting evidence, the State Department has chosen to ignore this blind spot in strategy for containing Iran’s illicit nuclear program.

According to the Argentine daily newspaper, Clarin, a former Argentine senior intelligence official, Antonio Stiuso, confirmed in two days of testimony before a judge that the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, interceded with Nestor Kirchner to resume nuclear cooperation with Iran, which had been suspended in 1991. Also, according to Stiuso’s testimony, Ahmadinejad was interested in using Argentina’s technology to produce plutonium bombs, which he characterized as more sophisticated than the ones Iran was trying to make with enriched uranium.

Stiuso noted that Venezuela did not possess the technical knowledge to make use of the nuclear technology sought by Chávez from Argentina. Instead, because Iran’s nuclear plans were designed by Argentines in the 1960s, Stiuso’s theory is that Tehran was the ultimate beneficiary of such nuclear cooperation.

 

Stiuso also testified that the former prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, was murdered for refusing an order from former president Cristina Kirchner to cease investigating Iran’s role in the 1992 and 1994 bombings and its corrupt dealings with Argentine officials. In a draft criminal complaint discovered after the prosecutor was found dead last year in an apparently staged suicide, Nisman accused Cristina Kirchner of covering up the involvement of five Iranians who have been charged with planning the 1994 terrorist attack against the Jewish Community Center in the heart of Argentina’s capital city.

In a separate development, last Thursday, Nisman’s family disclosed a written statement by a prosecutor from Argentina’s federal appeals court saying that scientific tests failed to find evidence that he fired the pistol found near his body. This is the first formal statement by a government official confirming suspicions that Nisman was the victim of a homicide.

From the US side, the Obama State Department has systematically neglected the dangerous liaisons among Venezuela, Argentina, and Iran. As dramatic evidence of Iran’s deadly provocations in our own neighborhood continues to come to light, it is fair to ask whether its cluelessness was by accident or design. … Much more here.

 

Trump Indebted to Spooky Dude?

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Big names back Trump tower

Soros, Deutsche Bank said to be in on 90-story building

October 28, 2004|By Thomas A. Corfman, Tribune staff reporter.

ChicagoTribune: Donald Trump has lined up three New York hedge funds, including money from billionaire George Soros, to invest $160 million in his Chicago skyscraper, a key piece in perhaps the largest construction financing in the city’s history, according to sources and public documents.

Despite reports about the project’s record-breaking sales, most of them from Trump himself, many Chicago real estate developers and lenders have expressed doubts about whether the 90-story tower would ever be built.

“It is such a huge project, and the prices he said he was getting were so outside the norm,” said Robert Glickman, president and chief executive of Chicago-based Corus Bank.

“It was reasonable to say, `Is this real?'” he said.

Much of the skepticism springs from Trump’s own hype. “Chicago developers are much less flamboyant,” said Glickman.

The massive financing, which sources say also will include a $650 million construction loan from Deutsche Bank, should quell those doubts.

Trump flies to Chicago Thursday morning for a ceremonial demolition of the former home of the Chicago Sun-Times, 401 N. Wabash Ave., which will be replaced by his 2.5 million-square-foot tower. The demolition is expected to begin for real in January.

On Wednesday Trump declined to comment on the financing, emphasizing instead the luxury project’s record-breaking sales.

The chief executive of New York-based Trump Organization said he has agreements to sell three-fourths of the 461 condominiums and 227 hotel-condo units for a combined $515 million.

“Nobody to my knowledge anywhere in the United States has ever sold more than $500 million worth of apartments prior to construction,” he said. “It’s a great tribute to Chicago, to the location and to a great design.

“And, I guess, to Trump, when you think of it,” he added.

The investor trio is led by Fortress Investment Group LLC, according to a financing statement filed Oct. 19 with the Cook County recorder’s office.

Fortress, which manages more than $10 billion in investments, is familiar with the downtown Chicago condominium market after providing a key $26 million loan on the River East mixed-use development last year.

The document does not identify the other participants, but a key member is Grove Capital LLP, according to sources familiar with the transaction.

The firm manages most of the multibillion-dollar real estate portfolio of the $13 billion Soros Fund Management, from which Grove Capital was spun off last month.

The third investor is Blackacre Institutional Capital Management LLC, the real estate arm of hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management LP, which manages assets totaling $14 billion.

Executives with the three hedge funds could not be reached for comment.

The $160 million investment is in the form of a mezzanine loan, a kind of second mortgage that typically charges a much higher interest rate than a first-mortgage construction loan.

Unlike the mezzanine loan, which has closed, terms of the $650 million construction loan have not yet been finalized, sources said.

Frankfurt, Germany-based Deutsche Bank, an active commercial real estate lender in the U.S., is expected to split up the loan with other banks.

Chicago developer Steven Fifield admits he was a “total skeptic” about the project, which initially included a large portion of office space.

But the elimination of the office space and the steadily climbing condo sales helped change Fifield’s view about Trump’s chances to get financing.

“I thought it was a given with the number of presales he had,” said Fifield, president of Fifield Cos.

After 13 months of marketing, condo prices at Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago have exceeded $900 a square foot, while hotel-condo units cost nearly $1,100 a square foot, according to an analysis of 53 units by Appraisal Research Counselors, a residential consulting firm.

Trump’s marketing firm recently put those units, including six hotel-condo units, on the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois.

Almost two weeks ago Trump completed a buyout of his former joint venture partner in the project, Hollinger International Inc., the troubled parent of the Sun-Times.

Although lining up the financing was a big step for Trump, he still has hurdles to overcome, including avoiding construction delays and cost overruns.

Still, he expressed no concern about the doubts harbored by some local real estate executives.

“It’s a very expensive building to build because of the quality we are putting into it,” he said. “So people of course would say, `Gee, that’s a lot of money to raise.’

“But for me, it’s not a lot of money. You understand,” he said.

*** Not the first rodeo for Trump and it bears repeating:

Trump picked stock fraud felon as senior adviser

2015: WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump knew a man he named as a senior business adviser in 2010 had been convicted in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme, according to Associated Press interviews and a review of court records.

Trump had worked with Felix Sater previously during the man’s stint as an executive at Bayrock Group LLC, a real estate development firm that partnered with Trump on numerous projects after renting office space from the Trump Organization. But Sater’s past was not widely known at the time because he was working as a government cooperator on mob cases and the judge overseeing Sater’s own case kept the proceedings secret. After Sater’s criminal history and past ties to organized crime came to light in 2007, Trump distanced himself from Sater.

Less than three years later, however, Trump tapped Sater for a business development role that came with the title of senior adviser to Donald Trump. Sater received Trump Organization business cards and was given an office within the Trump Organization’s headquarters, on the same floor as Trump’s own.

Trump said during an AP interview on Wednesday that he recalled only bare details of Sater.

“Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” Trump said, referring questions about Sater to his staff. “I’m not that familiar with him.”

According to Trump lawyer Alan Garten, Sater’s role was to prospect for high-end real estate deals for the Trump Organization. The arrangement lasted six months, Garten said.

The revelation about Sater’s role is significant because of its timing and directness, and marks the first time the Trump Organization has acknowledged publicly that Sater worked for Trump after the disclosures of Sater’s criminal background. Trump has said that among his secrets of success is that he surrounds himself with the “best and most serious people” and with “people you can trust.”

Sater never had an employment agreement or formal contract with the Trump Organization and did not close any deals for Trump, Garten said.

“He was trying to restart his life,” Garten said. “I believe he was regretful of things that happened in the past.”

Trump did not know the details of Sater’s cooperation with the government when Sater came in-house in 2010, Garten said. But Garten noted that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch praised Sater’s cooperation with the federal government, when senators asked about him during her confirmation hearings early this year. She said Sater cooperated against his Mafia stock fraud co-defendants and assisted the government on unspecified national security matters.

“If Mr. Sater was good enough for the government to work with, I see no reason why he wasn’t good enough for Mr. Trump,” Garten said.

He pleaded guilty in 1998 to one count of racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the prominent Genovese and Bonanno crime families, according to court records. Prosecutors called the operation a pump-and-dump scheme, in which insiders manipulate the price of obscure stocks and then sell them to hapless investors at inflated prices. Five years earlier, a New York State court had sentenced Sater to more than a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass.

Sater declined to discuss his work with Trump.

“Obviously a Donald-and-the-bad-guy piece is not interesting for me to participate in,” Sater wrote in an email to AP. His lawyer, Robert Wolf, said information about Sater in public records and lawsuits obtained by the AP was defamatory. He credited Sater’s stint as a government cooperator with potentially saving American military lives, although he did not provide details. Wolf told the AP to write about Sater’s past “at your own risk” but did not cite specific concerns.

After his 1998 racketeering conviction, Sater spent more than a decade as an informant on the Mafia and on national security-related matters. Federal prosecutors kept even the existence of Sater’s racketeering case out of publicly available court records for 14 years.

During that time, Sater launched a luxury real estate development career. Sealed court records prevented potential customers or partners from learning about his past association with organized crime. Sater altered his name, to Satter, and became a top executive in Bayrock, a development firm that partnered with Trump on the Trump Soho high-rise hotel in Manhattan and other branded luxury real estate deals.

Civil lawsuits — including a sealed case filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York that was obtained by the AP — have alleged that Bayrock engaged in a pattern of misconduct during Sater’s tenure, sometimes involving potential Trump projects. The AP obtained a copy of the sealed lawsuit, which was refiled last month, when the original complaint was included as part of a lawsuit Sater filed in an Israeli court. Bayrock’s attorney told AP that the firm did not mislead anyone about Sater’s past and denied any misconduct. The firm has not yet responded to a version of the complaint refiled in U.S. court last month.

Trump’s lawyer, Garten, said Trump had no knowledge of alleged improprieties at Bayrock or reason to believe that Sater was a major stakeholder in Bayrock’s projects. Trump only learned of Sater’s troubled past when The New York Times reported details in December 2007. In the article, Trump distanced himself from Sater, saying: “I didn’t really know him very well.”

Garten said Trump had no further interactions with Sater at Bayrock following the revelations of his criminal history. But a new relationship was formed in 2010 when Trump offered Sater office space and a chance to round up new business possibilities for the Trump Organization.

“The guy’s been in business a long time, he’s got a lot of contacts,” Garten said of Sater.

 Dubai  

 Istanbul

 

 

Trump and the Phony “Job-Creating” EB-5 Scam

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Thank you Michelle, I hope those dedicated researchers that did all that grand work on Obama, too late in the game, don’t do it a second time….

Malkin: Ugh: Trump and the Phony “Job-Creating” EB-5 Green Card Racket

By: Michelle Malkin

CR: Whelp. It appears that one of Donald Trump’s projects helped make America great… by soliciting an estimated $50 million from Chinese investors using the fraud-riddled EB-5 green card program for politically connected cronies.

This is the same racket exploited by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, lobbied for by Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and DHS official Alejandro Mayorkas, and embraced by South Dakota Republican officials. It’s a scam I’ve reported on for years.

Bloomberg News has the new story on how EB-5 funded a Trump-branded tower in New Jersey. In a nutshell:

Trump Bay Street is a 50-story luxury rental apartment building being built by Kushner Companies, whose chief executive officer, Jared Kushner, is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. It will have an outdoor pool, indoor golf simulator and sweeping views of Lower Manhattan; it adjoins an existing high rise condo, Trump Plaza Residence. The firm that was hired to seek investors, US Immigration Fund, is run by Florida developer Nicholas Mastroianni, who announced a partnership last year with a Trump golf course in Jupiter, Florida.

The visa program is known as EB-5. In exchange for investing at least $500,000 in a project promising to create jobs, foreigners receive a two-year visa with a good chance of obtaining permanent residency for them and their families. In 2014, the most recent year for which records are available, the U.S. issued 10,692 of these visas — 85% to people from China.

The Jersey City project has raised $50 million, about a quarter of its funding, from loans obtained through EB-5, according to a slide presentation by US Immigration Fund. Mark Giresi, general counsel of US Immigration Fund, said he believed nearly all of the EB-5 investors in the Trump project were from China.

A Trump spokesperson said the presidential candidate was not a partner in the financing deal. A Kushner flack told Bloomberg News the project was “entirely legal and creating jobs.”

But in my longtime investigations and in Sold Out, my book with John Miano, the evidence is clear: EB-5’s job creation claims are as phony and manufactured as fuzzy porkulus math, H-1B lobbyists’ math, and corporate welfare/economic development subsidies math.

Since 2001, I’ve warned about the systemic and bipartisan corruption of America’s EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. The program puts America up for sale to the most politically connected bidders.

Created under an obscure section of the expansionist Immigration Act of 1990, EB-5 promised bountiful economic development for the U.S. in exchange for granting permanent residency (and eventual American citizenship) to foreign investors. The law allows 10,000 alien entrepreneurs a year to obtain green cards by investing between $500,000 and $1 million in new commercial enterprises or troubled businesses. After two years, foreign investors, their spouses, and their children can receive “conditional permanent resident” status for two years and a gateway to permanent U.S. citizenship.

Originally, the law required individual investments in commercial enterprises to directly generate at least 10 new full-time jobs. Investors were expected to manage the businesses themselves and dedicate some of the newly-created jobs to exports. Failure would mean loss of their money and their business. In 1992, Congress created the “Immigrant Investor Pilot Program” and established government-approved EB-5 “regional centers” — specially selected business groups and corporate entities designated to administer EB-5 investments and oversee a much more relaxed definition of job creation.

The idea was to pool investor funds in a defined industry and targeted region to promote economic growth. Under this loan model, the regional center would recruit and collect funding from a group of foreign investors, then turn around and lend the money to selected projects at a low interest rate. The project would then pay off the loan over an agreed period of time. In targeted areas of high unemployment, the threshold for investment was lowered.

There are currently 614 such regional centers approved by the feds. Participation in the program has risen from 5,748 visa winners in 2008 to 22,444 in 2014. EB-5 participants in these joint ventures can fulfill job-creation requirements if they “create or preserve” either direct jobs or “indirect” jobs shown to be “created collaterally or as a result of capital invested in a commercial enterprise affiliated with a regional center by an EB-5 investor.” The five-year “pilot program,” which has been reauthorized routinely since its inception, was extended last year until September 2016.

As John and I reported, early EB-5 boosters used various theoretical multipliers to hype the program’s benefits, predicting that “4 million millionaire investors along with family members, would sign up, bringing in $4 billion in new investments and creating 40,000 jobs [annually].” In 2011, President Obama’s Council on Job Competitiveness regurgitated the same, old figures in its call to “radically expand” the program:

If the EB-5 program reaches maximum capacity, it could result annually in the creation of approximately 4,000 new businesses, $2 billion to $4 billion of foreign investment capital, and create 40,000 jobs.

But in practice, like so many of the Beltway’s immigration programs, EB-5’s ever-evolving regulations are Byzantine and arbitrary. Fraud and abuse are rampant. Unsurprisingly, the purported economic benefits of EB-5 are woefully dubious. One sensible journalist, Charles Lane, put the EB-5 promoters’ claims in proper perspective:

“Sounds impressive,” he explained, “until you realize that foreign investment in the United States totals $2.5 trillion and that the program’s fuzzy job-creation count includes jobs ‘indirectly’ attributable to the investment. EB-5 would be dubious policy even if it could claim five times that impact. Simply put, it is corporate welfare — yet another attempt to subsidize the flow of capital into politically favored channels.”

Center for Immigration Studies analyst David North adds that “foreign investment comes to the United States routinely, in large volume, with minuscule help from EB-5.” In 2010, he observed, total foreign investment in the United States increased by $1.9 trillion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Based on the investors’ green card applications filed two years after the first investment, North estimated that “EB-5 investment that year was about $191 million, and that was a well above-average year for the program. So, for every $100 of increased foreign investment that year, the EB-5 program contributed about one penny [emphasis added].”

Beltway cronyism was embedded in EB-5’s DNA from the get-go. The original Democratic House sponsor and his spokesman went on to establish for-profit companies that marketed the program and provided consulting services. Former federal immigration officials from the George H.W. Bush administration formed lucrative limited partnerships to cash in on their access and EB-5 expertise.

Key supporters of the original immigrant investor visa program included Democrat Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Paul Simon, D-Ill. Big Government Republicans embraced it, too. Prescott Bush, George W. Bush’s uncle, was on the board of American Immigration Services, one of the leading EB-5 visa vendors. So was former President Bush’s Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, Gene McNeary. GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell worked closely with the woman who was instrumental in drafting the EB-5 law: Maria Hsia.

That final name should ring a bell. Hsia was a Simon and McConnell donor identified by the House Governmental Affairs Committee as “an agent of the Chinese government.” In 2000, she was found guilty by a federal jury of laundering more than $100,000 in illegal donations to the Democratic National Committee through the infamous Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in California. At the time, Funny Money Honey Hsia was working for McConnell and others on the 1990 immigration bill, she also worked for a campaign fund-raising group called the Pacific Leadership Council. Hsia co-founded the PLC with Lippo Bank officials John Huang and James Riady, the chief figures in the Clinton-Gore Donorgate scandal convicted of campaign-finance crimes. At least six Lippo Bank officials reportedly benefited from the EB-5 law. Hsia partnered with former Democratic Rep. Bruce A. Morrison of Connecticut, an immigration lawyer, author of the 1990 Immigration Act in the House, and main sponsor of EB-5. After leaving Congress to run (unsuccessfully) for governor in Connecticut, Morrison formed a business to market the investor visa program.

An entire side industry of economic book-cookers has arisen to supply analyses of the “job creation” benefits of EB-5 projects and to gerrymander Census employment data to fit the program’s definition of “targeted employment areas” in order to qualify for lower investment thresholds (as was done in New York City’s Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park EB-5 deal).

Think Solyndra and federal stimulus math on steroids.

How does Trump respond to the debunking of the bogus job-creation math upon which the entire cash-for-citizenship swindle rests? Have any other Trump projects been subsidized by EB-5 China money? Where are the other GOP candidates on the issue and will they join Capitol Hill calls to kill the program?

If the RNC-organized, corporate media-controlled GOP debates weren’t such clown shows, maybe American voters could get some answers.

 

 

 

Not 11 Million but 15.7 Million

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Gang of Eight Legislation Includes Amnesty and Massive Increases to Legal Immigration and Guest-Worker Programs

The outline also details significant changes to the legal immigration process that will likely result in millions of additional green cards over the first 10 years. The bill will clear the current backlog of foreign nationals that have been approved for a green card but are years away from receiving them because of annual limits or per-country caps. The goal is to issue green cards to the 4.5 million individuals waiting in line within the first 10 years, so the Gang of Eight can claim that those in the “legal” line will get their green cards before the illegal aliens become eligible.

The bill will also create a new merit-based green cards category where temporary visa holders can earn points based on certain criteria. Visa holders with the most amount of points will receive a green card. The plan calls for up to 250,000 new green cards each year through the merit-based program.

Illegal aliens that are adjusted to RPI status will be allowed to apply for a green card through the merit-based program after 10 years if certain “triggers” are met, however, illegal aliens that qualify for the DREAM Act can receive instant citizenship after 5 years and illegal aliens that work a required number of hours in agriculture can receive a green card in 5 years.

Green cards for the rest of the illegal-alien population will be granted after 10 years if all employers use E-Verify, DHS has completed the entry/exit system at sea and air ports (land ports are excluded), and if DHS is apprehending 90% of illegal border crossers in high risk border sectors.

The bill also creates a new temporary, low-skilled guest-worker program, expands the annual number of H-1B visas issued to high-skilled immigrants, and creates a new guest-worker program for farmers. All temporary visa holders will be eligible for green cards through the new merit-based green card category.

The bill also lifts the annual green card caps on extraordinary workers, multinational executives, and doctoral degree holders in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  Much more here.

Record 61 million immigrants in U.S., 15.7 million illegally

WashingtonExaminer: There are a record 61 million immigrants and their American-born children in the United States, including an estimated 15.7 million illegally here, according to a new analysis of 2015 U.S. Census data.

The estimated number of undocumented immigrants is one of the highest ever.

The analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies found that 45.3 million, or three-fourths of the 61 million, are legal immigrants and their children. The report out Monday notes that the so-called “Gang of Eight” immigration bill supported by GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio would have doubled that number of legal immigrants.

“These numbers raise profound questions that are seldom even asked: What number of immigrants can be assimilated? What is the absorption capacity of our schools, health care system, infrastructure, and labor market? What is the effect on the environment and quality of life from significantly increasing the nation’s population density?” wrote Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of Research.

“With 45 million legal immigrants and their young children already here, does it make sense to continue admitting more than one million new legal permanent immigrants every year?” he added.

His report found that the normal pattern of immigration to the United States changed after 1970. At that time, there were 13.5 million immigrants, or about one in 15 U.S. residents.

But since 2000, the number of immigrants has increased 18.4 million, and now nearly one of every five U.S. residents are immigrants.

“The number of immigrants and their young children grew six times faster than the nation’s total population from 1970 to 2015 — 353 percent vs. 59 percent,” he added.

Camarota dug deep into Census Current Population Survey and other data to determine his estimate of 15.7 million illegals in the United States.

“Our best estimate is that in 2015 there were 5.1 million children with at least one illegal immigrant parent. Taken together, the best available evidence indicates that there were a total of 15.7 million illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children in the adjusted December 2015 CPS, accounting for 25.7 percent of the 61 million immigrants and their children in the country,” he said.

He broke the figures down state by state and Camarota said that “the number of immigrants and their minor children from 1970 to 2015 has been nothing short of astonishing.” Some examples:

— In Georgia, this population grew 3,058 percent (from 55,000 to 1.75 million), 25 times faster than the overall state population.

— In Nevada, this population grew 3,002 percent (from 26,000 to 821,000), six times faster than the overall state population.

— In North Carolina, this population grew 2,937 percent (from 47,000 to 1.43 million), 30 times faster than the overall state population.

*** In all fairness, Rubio is not the only Senator to hold exclusive blame. Imagine the true negotiations and what was omitted.

Back in 2013: 

Morning Bell:10 Problems with the Gang of Eight Immigration Bill, DailySignal:

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