A Happy EB-5 Correction in South Dakota

By David North on November 14, 2013

Writers hate to file corrections, as it means that they made a mistake. Witness Sunday's awkward moment on "60 Minutes" when the luminous Lara Logan had to admit that her program had been conned by a mercenary security guard regarding the raid on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

But I, on the other hand, am happy to make this correction dealing with the EB-5 program in South Dakota. I reported that the governor of that state, who had announced the takeover of the EB-5 regional center that had made a number of controversial deals in the state, notably the spectacular failure of a cattle slaughter house, did not have the power to run the regional center.

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Wrong. While the overwhelming majority of governors have no such power, unknown to me the South Dakota state government held the USCIS license to run the regional center and had subcontracted that out to South Dakota Regional Center, Inc., and thus had the power to undo the contract. Governor Daugaard did just that.

That's commendable. The regional center had been the broker for the questionable deals. The new proprietors of the middleman function, state government officials, will probably proceed slowly and carefully. Any slow-down of this fast-burgeoning program, which sells a family-sized handful of visas to alien investors putting up $500,000 each, is a good thing.

h/t: Thanks to David Montgomery for making me aware of the situation.