EB-5 Class Action Lawsuit Filed: Zhang v. USCIS (Cash is Cash)

"This is a putative class action brought by immigrant investors who sought and were unlawfully denied the chance to immigrate to the United States pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5), known as the “Immigrant Investor Law” or “EB-5 Program.”

... Despite Plaintiffs’ compliance with the statute’s capital investment requirement, USCIS denied Plaintiffs’ petitions. The denials do not dispute that Plaintiffs, as a factual matter, wired $500,000 in cash into bank accounts designated for the EB-qualifying new commercial enterprises. Nor is there any dispute that those new commercial enterprises would have used Plaintiffs’ investments to create at least 10 jobs for U.S. workers. Instead, USCIS denied Plaintiffs’ petitions on the sole basis that because Plaintiffs obtained the cash they invested in the new commercial enterprise through a loan, that cash was not “cash,” but “indebtedness.”

... USCIS’s denials are fundamentally incompatible with the plain language of the statute and implementing regulations. The agency justified treating Plaintiffs’ cash investments as “indebtedness” rather than “cash” because Plaintiffs obtained the cash they invested in their new commercial enterprises through a loan. But the fact that Plaintiffs obtained the cash they invested in the new commercial enterprise does not transform that cash into anything other than cash. And “cash” is unambiguously and unconditionally defined as a form of “capital” under Defendants’ regulations. Plaintiffs therefore satisfied the EB-5 statute’s capital investment requirement."

- Zhang v. USCIS, filed June 23, 2015 by KURZBAN, KURZBAN, WEINGER, TETZELI & PRATT, P.A.