Before the website of his legal practice was taken down—reportedly his own doing—Khan was advertising his services as a promoter of so-called EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.
A EB-5 investment is a DHS-administered visa program that almost all Republicans say has to be curbed or cut outright. This is because they’ve caused massive, intractable securities fraud.
The EB-5 program lets wealthy applicants, and their families, skip the line for a green card if they invest $500,000 in a viable, jobs-generating business for two years.
Ever since its creation, critics have called it a visa-for-sale scheme. Former labor economics professor at Cornell University,Vernon Briggs, Jr.,
said the entire concept of investor immigrants “introduces the principle that the rich of the world can buy their way into the United States.” Americans, he says, should view the program “as a source of shame.”
There’s also the scheme part. Under current rules, the business underlying EB-5 projects involve middlemen charged with facilitating the investment and DHS-application process.
These brokers— almost always immigration attorneys—take fat fees of up to $60,000 from each foreign green card-hopeful.