FLIM-FLAM - NE Vermont Project

(Flim-Flam)

"Is this job-creating foreign investment project too good to be true?" PBS NewsHour 12/10/2015

Money speaks, so much for immigration control.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In northeastern Vermont, a half-billion dollar development is helping to transform a lagging economy into the state's job-creation leader.  It seems like a win for tourists and for foreign investors, who put up the money in return for green cards for themselves and their families on the EB-5 visa program.  Are these investors getting what they paid for? Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Earlier this week, we looked at how a little known immigration program originally intended to benefit poor and rural communities is being used, and some say abused, by wealthy urban developers.  Congress must decide whether to renew the 25-year-old program next week.

Tonight, economics correspondent Paul Solman has a report about how the program is helping a poor rural area, but still stirring up controversy.

It’s part of our series Making Sen$e, which airs every Thursday on the “NewsHour.”

Just four miles from the Canadian border, surf’s up, however improbably, at the Jay Peak Resort, part of the half-billion-dollar development project to transform the economically depressed Northeast Kingdom, as this corner of Vermont is called, with foreign investment.  The developer is Bill Stenger.

BILL STENGER, CEO, Jay Peak Resort:  In the last seven years, we have constructed three different hotels, a beautiful indoor water park, ice arena, conference center, wedding facility.  And we have had a tremendous impact on our local economy regionally as well.

PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour):  A local economy that, for most of Vermont’s history, has been at the very bottom, but now leads the state in job creation.

So, the Northeast Kingdom wins, tourists win, and so do the foreign investors, not only with a promised return on their investment, but — and here’s the novel incentive of the so-called EB-5 program — with green cards, permanent resident visas for them and their families, in exchange for forking over $500,000 to private companies to create at least 10 jobs in areas of deep unemployment.

BILL STENGER:  Well, you don’t have to live in Vermont.  There are a number of people from around the world who love Florida, Arizona, California, warmer weather.

PAUL SOLMAN:  But besides the lure of sunny climes, says Stenger:

BILL STENGER:  Parents oftentimes will gift their son or daughter an investment.  They can complete their studies here.  And if they can find a job in the United States, the green card will allow them to accept the job, and within five years they will be able to apply for citizenship, and it will be granted.