Types of EB-5 Regional Centers

After 2002, when the EB-5 Regional Center (RC) Program was revived due to various causes, regional centers started cropping up all over the USA to set up EB-5 projects that would be partially or completely funded by EB-5 investors' moneys. Starting with only a handful in 2003, the number of Regional Centers grew to approximately 30 as of January 2009. Add to this number, many RC designation proposals/requests that are pending at California Service Center, that's a lot of RCs to sort through. These Regional Centers possess certain characteristics based on which they can be grouped or divided -- differentiating features. The first grouping feature is whether the RC is affiliated with a governmental entity. Certain RCs, such as CanAm Program's Philadelphia PIDC RC, Pennsylvania DCED RC, and Hawaii DBEDT RC, are affiliated with a leading economic development agencies in the RC geographic area. There are only a handful of RCs which work with affiliated with governmental or quasi-governmental entities to try to help EB-5 investors to meet the EB-5 requirements. The second differentiating feature is whether the applicable New Commercial Enterprise (the "NCE") of RC Program, whether it is a Limited Partnership or corporation, engages in making investment loan, or the NCE uses the money to directly engage in a particular business, i.e. use investors' moneys to directly run a hotel by itself or in a joint venture with another company or as an equity partner. Note again Matter of Izumii specifically allows NCE to engage in making loans to a third-party business that actually creates requisite jobs. There are respective advantages and disadvantages depending on the category. The third differentiating characteristic is whether the subject RC uses RIMS II job-calculation methodology to estimate the number of full-time positions the specific EB-5 project will create and which model under the RIMS II it will use. We believe the RIMS II job-calculation methodology is more conservative methodology mainly because the government itself developed it and is using it. RIMS II was developed by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (see www.bea.gov), which is a division within the U.S. Department of Commerce. The last differentiating feature is the track record -- the I-526 petition approvals, the number (both the individuals and EB-5 projects) of I-829 approvals. It should be noted that the fact that a RC is relatively new does not mean that RC is not suitable for you. Rather, it should be just one of the selection criteria that should be examined. You may really be impressed with the principals of a relative new RC, in which case, you should go for it.