USCIS/DHS Gets Serious About EB-5

To the ABSOLUTE DELIGHT of the EB-5 Community, on August 2, 2011 Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Alejandro Mayorkas just unveiled a series of policy, operational, and outreach efforts “to fuel the nation's economy an...

Jose E. Latour Aug 05, 2011

120+ Squeeze Into Boston EB-5 Seminar

Well, as I anticipated, Brian Su pulled together a sold out crowd for the Boston EB-5 workshop in which I am currently sitting.  Ron Klasko just gave an excellent presentation looking into his "crystal ball" to see the EB-5 future, giving us both worst and best case scenarios.  A...

Jose E. Latour Jul 29, 2011

Boston EB-5 Workshop Almost Sold Out

Just back from a great vacation in the Keys and Costa Rica, ready to strap on the EB-5 boots and get busy.  Tomorrow I head to Boston, where Brian Su's next EB-5 Workshop/Networker takes place on Friday.  Each of Brian's events is more powerful and useful than the prior one, and ...

Jose E. Latour Jul 27, 2011

Still on USCIS EB-5 Stakeholders Call but I found something interesting…

I'm still on the call, marveling at the tremendous diversity in domain expertise demonstrated by the folks calling in with questions (i.e. brilliant to utterly sans clue (-:) and I noticed this on question 15 of the Meeting Q&A...see what I highlight and watch the bullet USCIS dodges, accidental...

Jose E. Latour Jun 30, 2011

1999 Flashback: My Thoughts on the Internet and the Practice of Law

Just found this, posted on my old "Port of Entry" web column (the word "blog" didn't exist) in 1999.  Seems like the right time to rerun it:Top Ten Reasons Why Web-Based Immigration Firms are Superior to Conventional Practices7/23/9910. Email creates a written record of...

Jose E. Latour Jun 27, 2011

Kudos With a Disclaimer

My good friend from EB-5 Land, Michael Gibson, recently published an internal "EB-5 Yearbook", memorializing some of the people, events, and developments in our very specialized little legal community this past year.  I was delighted to see an entry about me in the yearbook...and had to smile when I...

Jose E. Latour Jun 26, 2011

Something Solid…Something Real? Challenging the Residential Real Estate Market

Foreign investors snapping up real estate is nothing new in South Florida, but record numbers of them have poured in so far this year, eclipsing anything we've seen before.  Depending on whose numbers you believe, cash buyers from overseas have made up more than half of the closings in our...

Jose E. Latour Jun 21, 2011

San Diego EB-5 Workship with Brian Su

Brian has done it again: with an All Star roster of speakers, his San Diego EB-5 event is proving to be another invaluable experience for those of us in this sector. As participants were greeted with the beaming smile of Aijun Cheng (Chief Investment Officer of Kantex Oil & Gas, LLC, currently i...

Jose E. Latour Jun 18, 2011

Positive Changes on U.S. Visas for Iranian Nationals

Two of my best friends are Iranian-Americans...well, like me, they really are just plain old "Americans".  The "Iranian" prefix for these guys -  like the "Cuban" prefix for me -- is really more of a heritage stamp than any sort of embedded ethnic identity.
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Jose E. Latour May 26, 2011

How To Destroy an Economy

Where politics steps into the private sector and emasculates it, only one thing happens, invariably: the economic might of a nation embarks on an exodus via its best and brightest.And this, my friends, is why I have so many good clients in Sunny Isles...US slams Russia over Khodorkovsky treatment - ...

Jose E. Latour May 25, 2011