Feds won’t fight ‘sweetheart’ Quebec immigration program despite B.C. fallout | Vancouver Sun

2016/06/25 Leave a comment

Given the number of files the government has with the provinces and Quebec, not surprising that there is no desire to reopen the agreement. But the disparity is striking, although it would be helpful to have a comparative table for all provinces, comparing the per immigrant numbers over the past 10 years.

The abuse of investor immigrant programs, both the cancelled federal program and Quebec’s program, has been well documented:

The Trudeau government says it has no interest in challenging Quebec’s “sweetheart” immigration system, even though West Coast critics say two components of that province’s system effectively hurt B.C.

“I’m quite happy with the relationship that we currently enjoy with Quebec,” Immigration Minister John McCallum said in an interview after confirming that he won’t pursue changes.

Jason Kenney, considered a leading challenger for the Conservative Party leadership if he remains in federal politics, fumed when he was immigration minister about “fraud” in Quebec’s Immigrant Investor program.

That program lets wealthy foreigners effectively buy permanent residence status in Canada, but research has indicated that most settle outside Quebec and especially in B.C.

As a result, Quebec gets the financial benefits from the cash-for-visa program while, say critics, B.C. has to deal with both the positives and negatives associated with the arrival of wealthy migrants.

Benefits for B.C. include the stimulation of the economy with luxury purchases. But new arrivals — including the spouses and children of “astronauts” who work and pay taxes overseas — also use public education and health care services, plus they play a role in driving up real estate prices.

The federal government shut down its own investor program in 2014 due to public criticism and the widespread perception that the cost outweighed the benefits.

Kenney, who also complained about a “sweetheart” 1991 deal that gave Quebec a hugely disproportionate share of federal immigrant settlement dollars, was never able to convince cabinet colleagues and the bureaucracy to take on Quebec.

McCallum said he also has no interest in shutting down the investor program or taking steps that would require Quebec to keep rich immigrants in the province longer.

“It’s not something we can control even if we wanted to, because once you are a permanent resident the Constitution allows you to live wherever you want to live in Canada.”

He also said he will not try to renegotiate the 1991 Canada-Quebec immigration accord, agreed to at a time when the sovereignty movement was at its strongest.

It granted Quebec an annual grant starting at $75 million a year in immigrant and refugee resettlement money.
That $75 million would be worth about $117 million in today’s dollars. However, the generous escalator clause included in the 1991 deal has resulted in Quebec getting almost triple that post-inflation amount, or $345.1 million, in the 2015-16 fiscal year.

The formula, based on past immigrant intake as well as Canada’s economic growth figures, results in steady and sometimes dramatic increases.

The federal government was unable to provide comparative figures Thursday on how much it spends in provinces outside Quebec for immigration resettlement.  Prior to the former government’s decision to take over control of that work in 2012, the B.C. government was getting roughly $3,000 from Ottawa for each permanent resident arriving on an annual basis.

That compares with the $6,600-a-head subsidy going to Quebec.

Source: Feds won’t fight ‘sweetheart’ Quebec immigration program despite B.C. fallout | Vancouver Sun

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Inevitable: Alleged EB-5 Fraudster Already Has a Third Nation’s Citizenship | Center for Immigration Studies

2016/06/15 Leave a comment

David North on the use/abuse of the US EB-5 investor immigrant visa program:

It had to happen. One of the alleged fraudsters involved in an EB-5 scandal in the United States has also purchased an additional citizenship in another nation.

We reported a few days ago that Charles Liu and his wife, Lisa Wang, were exposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as diverters of $18 million in EB-5 investments involving a cancer treatment center in Southern California. They sent the money to their own bank accounts and to three companies in China rather than building the medical center.

It now turns out that Liu, before the SEC’s move, had already purchased a citizenship from Grenada, the little ex-British island we invaded during the Reagan administration. They call their equivalent of our EB-5 program “citizenship by investment” (CBI); several other island nations have similar programs.

Irritatingly, neither the SEC complaint nor any of the press coverage describes, in this immigration-related case, the immigration status of Liu and Wang. SEC says he is a “resident of Laguna Niguel, California” as is she. The form that Liu used when applying for Homeland Security permission to run a regional center (the I-924) does not ask about the civil status of the person applying for the center. I would think it would be a perfectly legitimate question.

One Caribbean newspaper reported that the government of Grenada had said in the blandest of terms, following the SEC announcement: “Through our diplomatic channels, the Government of Grenada continues to monitor the situation, to communicate with all diplomatic and other sources, and continues to fully engage mutual cooperation with all the parties concerned.”

Another, earlier report said that Liu is already deeply embedded in that nation’s diplomatic channels as he is the commercial attaché in the little nation’s Beijing embassy. This is presumably a part-time, probably unpaid position, as the incumbent is, according to SEC, living in yet a third country, the United States.

There are no indications as of this writing that anything has gone wrong with the island investment.

So we have what appears to be a Chinese national who has already purchased one additional citizenship, and has secured what appears to be a diplomatic post from his new nation, putting together a company which will promote tourism in Grenada while simultaneously seeking to sell American green cards to Chinese investors by falsely promising to build a cancer treatment center in the United States.

Charles Liu is just one example of the interesting people who are attracted to our EB-5 program.

Source: Inevitable: Alleged EB-5 Fraudster Already Has a Third Nation’s Citizenship | Center for Immigration Studies

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Malta PM says decisions on citizenship by investment schemes should not be taken by politicians

2016/06/10 Leave a comment

This is the flagship model used by advocates of investor and citizenship immigration programs in Canada. Does not change the fundamental question of the morality and ethics of buying citizenship, and that this is largely driven by the business interests of consultants, rather than broader ones:

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat underlined the benefits of the Citizenship by Investment programme for the Maltese economy when he addressed the Investment Migration Forum 2016 in Geneva this afternoon.

The forum is being hosted by the Investment Migration Council, a worldwide association for investor immigration and citizenship-by-investment, grouping the leading stakeholders in the field and giving the industry a voice.

Dr Muscat said the global industry linked to citizenship by investment would grow when criteria for such schemes were known and decisions were taken by technical people and not politicians.

He said that it was on this basis that Malta successfully launched its programme, which was now yielding great benefits for the economy.

He said that despite controversies, Malta’s scheme still remained the only one approved by the European Commission.

Source: PM says decisions on citizenship by investment schemes should not be taken by politicians – timesofmalta.com

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with ,

How Chinese millionaires buy U.S. citizenship

2015/05/15 Leave a comment

US Business investor visa, another example of selling access. Expect that the numbers are smaller than State dept believes:

But what if you could buy your way to the front of the line? One visa allows investors willing to dish out half a million dollars a fast pass to a green card.

To qualify for the so-called EB-5 visa, an investor must inject $500,000 into a project or business that will create 10 new jobs in a high unemployment or rural area. The visa has become so popular among Chinese millionaires looking for a ticket to citizenship that for the first time since it was introduced 24 years ago, the government has run out of available slots… until October.

But since the EB-5 visa was created in 1990, some have seen it as selling citizenship to the highest bidder. Supporters of the visa argue it is a painless way to employ U.S. workers, stimulate the economy and create funding for American businesses. In fact, the program has generated $8.6 billion in investment and created more than 57,000 jobs since 1990, according to the State department.

Still, critics say the government needs to keep a closer eye on investors applying for the visa to ensure they have met the employment requirements adequately. Investments built in high-end neighborhoods that employ workers from poorer areas often fulfill the visa’s rural and low-income job quota. With vthe isa up for renewal this September, some are urging Congress to reconsider.

How Chinese millionaires buy U.S. citizenship.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

USA: Citizenship for Sale

2015/05/14 Leave a comment

On the US business immigration program. Similar issues as in the previous Canadian program:

Now let’s turn to the United States. Under the EB-5 visa program, foreigners can obtain a green card and then citizenship by making a small investment—$1 million, or $500,000 if it’s in an area with high unemployment—that will create or preserve 10 jobs for U.S. workers. Foreign investors can funnel their funds through “regional centers,” which are private organizations that finance commercial projects. These centers spare investors the trouble of figuring out for themselves whether an area suffers from high unemployment and whether a specific investment would generate the requisite 10 jobs.
The program is a mess. The government “is unable to demonstrate the benefits of foreign investment into the U.S. economy” under the program, in the words of the Inspector General of Homeland Security. Among other things, it’s almost impossible to figure out whether a specific investment generates jobs rather than reshuffles them from one place to another. There have also been examples of outright fraud and political cronyism. Part of the problem is a lack of documentation but the real problem is that the program is misconceived.
When we think about investment, the starting point is that investors don’t need citizenship or any other inducement to put money into a project when they will earn higher than the market rate of return. So given the risk and other opportunities, someone will invest $1 million or more in a mall complex or housing development if the expected return is, say, 10 or 15 percent. Many foreigners make such investments, and the vast majority of them make them not to obtain citizenship but to make money. In 2013, they ponied up $236 billion. Meanwhile, Americans invested another $2.5 trillion in the economy. At most $10 billion can be attributed to foreigners who seek visas, and probably a lot less.
The EB-5 program, then, just pumps up aggregate foreign investment in the United States by a few tenths of a percent per year. Given the size and liquidity of capital markets, the program has reduced the cost of capital by an infinitesimal amount, basically zero. A tiny reduction in the cost of capital might produce a tiny increase in the number of jobs, but most likely it will produce a tiny increase in profits for other investors or tiny reductions in price for consumers. It’s a bit like saying that you can immigrate to the United States if you buy a few cars from a domestic auto dealer at a price slightly higher than what the dealer is charging.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2015/05/eb_5_visa_program_for_immigrant_investors_this_path_to_citizenship_is_a.html 

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Terry Glavin: Canada’s unhappy affair with China’s princeling millionaires

2015/04/24 Leave a comment

Terry Glavin on the set-for-abuse investor immigrant program, cancelled by the Conservatives and refashioned to address some of the abuse (not convinced that the new Immigrant Investor Venture Capital Pilot Program will completely address some of these issues):

To give you a sense of how absurdly the taboo had throttled Canadian debates it’s instructive to recall the rubbish that was uttered when Harper finally got around to shutting it all down last year with a resolve to start from scratch. Vancouver MP Don Davies, the New Democrats’ international trade critic, accused the government of “damaging Canada’s economy and trade relationships.” Then there was Liberal warhorse John McCallum (Markham—Unionville): “Are Conservatives inadvertently picking on Chinese people?”

China’s massive Operation Skynet fraud squad is now rummaging through Vancouver’s real estate industry. British Columbia’s police agencies won’t say whether they’re cooperating, but even if they were it wouldn’t be easy work. Over its final decade or so, the Immigrant Investor Program drew more than 30,000 Chinese millionaires to British Columbia.

Just one of the unseemly costs of Ottawa’s wheel-greasing for Beijing’s princelings is a sum that might well amount to billions of dollars in no-interest loans that should have gone to British Columbia’s provincial treasury. Instead, the money got spent on thousands of back-door keys the Canada-Quebec Accord made available with a wink and a nod to Chinese millionaires bound for Vancouver, in transit through Montreal.

It says something unflattering all round that what we know now about Canada’s immigrant-investor courtship of Beijing’s princelings is mainly due to the courage and persistence of a single reporter

Contrast that with the marquee billing given to the gluttonous wastrel Mike Duffy, a senator facing criminal charges that may or may not involve the prime minister’s former chief of staff having improperly repaid the federal treasury for travel and living expenses that Duffy may or may not have improperly billed the taxpayer, to the amount of $90,000. It’s a gripping yarn and dozens of journalists are on the story, but it says something unflattering all round that what we know now about Canada’s immigrant-investor courtship of Beijing’s princelings is mainly due to the courage and persistence of a single reporter.

Ian Young, Vancouver correspondent for the South China Morning Post, has been almost alone in chasing down the immigrant investor scandal. It was Young who recently ferreted out the data demonstrating that Canada’s investor class immigrants, about 80 per cent of whom are Chinese millionaires, appear to have contributed less to the federal treasury over the past quarter of a century in tax on earnings than the bedraggled refugees Canada admitted over that period.

Nobody seems to even know where all these bigshot investors have gone. Surveys by the China Merchants Bank show that nearly a quarter of Mainland China’s millionaires had already emigrated by 2013, but vacancy rates in Vancouver’s posh new condo districts are perhaps 30 per cent. The city doesn’t keep track, but University of British Columbia geography professor David Ley has been tracing the relationship between the rise in Vancouver residential property prices and the influx of immigrant investors over the years. The lines run in direct lockstep.

Terry Glavin: Canada’s unhappy affair with China’s princeling millionaires

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Newer posts →