Investigation Shows Rich Mexicans Seeking Legal Path to Residency Swindled
In the midst of a growing security crisis in Mexico, the McAllen-based USA Now Regional Center offered Mexican families with money an escape: Invest $500,000 in South Texas and get a legal permanent resident card in the United States. But the offer may have been too good to be true.
In mid-July, agents with the FBI raided USA Now and confiscated luxury cars it says were purchased with investors’ cash. A warrant filed in federal court alleges that Marco Ramirez and his wife, Bebe Ramirez, the owners of USA Now, were running a Ponzi scheme, defrauding foreign investors of millions of dollars.
USA Now opened for business in McAllen in April 2011 and was designated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as an EB-5 investor program. Congress created the EB-5 program in 1990, providing U.S. residency visas as an incentive to foreign entrepreneurs willing to invest $1 million in a business that created 10 or more jobs, or $500,000 for an economically distressed or rural area.
For years the program has been underutilized because of onerous paperwork and confusion about changing immigration requirements. But in 2007, with the economic crisis expanding and credit drying up, U.S. companies began to take a second look at the program and its pool of foreign investors. The security crisis in Mexico provided the willing participants. By 2011, there were more than 300 regional centers like USA Now nationwide, according to the Associated Press, up from 11 in 2007.
More at http://www.texasobserver.org/rich-mexicans-path-legal-residency-good-true/ .