ILW.COM EB-5 Blog

If you don’t have something nice to say (about the EB-5 program), then don’t say any. By Matt Gordon

The mainstream press, as all EB-5 community members know, has done a slanted and horrible job at providing balanced and unbiased coverage of the EB-5 program. Of course, many bad things have happened in the program and there are still many bad actors running amuck. In a multibillion dollar and growing industry, both are here to stay, although hopefully with a declining frequency in the future. What has been absent from mainstream press reporting has been the good stories. Excepting ILW’s work, its hard to find anyone publishing neutral let alone positive information on the happenings about EB-5. That is, until last Friday.

On Friday, JP Morgan Chase and Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a foundation started by Harvard’s Michael Porter, jointly issued a research report entitled, Financing Growth: A Practical Resource Guide for Small Businesses. The report itself is very pragmatic, dealing with the pros and cons of all potential investment sources for small businesses, including EB-5 capital. What it doesn’t do is EB-5 bash. It lays out what’s good and what isn’t about it. While this isn’t the popular press, it is a published research report that presented the EB-5 sector in a fair light. So maybe (hopefully) this can show the popular press that the world wants a little more balanced information about the program.

It was particularly gratifying to see my firm’s subsidiary, E3 Cargo, as the only example featured to illustrate how EB-5 capital can be used for small businesses. E3 Cargo is a great story within EB-5. E3 Cargo is hiring workers in Indianapolis, Indiana as we speak. It is located in Census Tract 3580, which has over 11.4% unemployment (which is in Marion Township, which has over 16%). The EB-5 program and the use of targeted employment areas is supposed to be about revitalizing economically distressed areas. With E3 Cargo, we create jobs right where the policy makers wanted them, not in a gerrymandered geography linking high and low unemployment areas, but right where the jobs are needed.

Hopefully other institutions and journalists will start to report on other companies that are working hard to fulfil EB-5’s policy mandate. There are many good stories out there.

To see a full copy of the JP Morgan report, see http://www.icic.org/ee_uploads/pdf/F...owth_FINAL.pdf