Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

U.S. Citizenship Should Not be for Sale
Townhall.com ^ | September 27, 2011 | Phyllis Schlafly

Posted on 09/27/2011 7:31:59 AM PDT by Kaslin

Outsourcing is not the only way we are losing American jobs to Communist China. The Chinese have figured out how to capture jobs inside the U.S. by using our EB-5 visas (employment-based, fifth priority).

Most Americans have never heard of this visa, but the Chinese are now planning to use it to build and run a casino labeled Maryland Live! near the Baltimore airport. Boasting 3,750 slot machines, this $440 million casino will be one of the largest in the country.

Failing to attract enough U.S. investors for this big-time gambling center, the promoters went to Shanghai in September and made a sales pitch to 50 rich Chinese to invest $500,000 each in this Maryland casino, which seems to offer a profitable return. The sweetest part of the deal, however, is that the investor's entire family will be rewarded with a set of U.S. green cards valid for life, a system called "investment immigration."

EB-5 visas were created to promote investment in depressed areas, but the area isn't depressed and Maryland's unemployment rate is about 2 percentage points lower than the nation's. Skillful gerrymandering produced a map to label a parking lot in the huge Arundel Mills Mall a "targeted unemployment area."

Don't count on the Maryland casino to produce good jobs for Americans. If the Chinese follow the pattern they used in building the San-Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, low-paid Chinese workers will be imported to build and staff the casino.

To qualify for EB-5 visas, each investor need create only 10 jobs, and they can be "indirectly created," whatever that means. And the investment can be withdrawn after only 24 months.

Another EB-5 case involved a dairy farm in South Dakota. It created some jobs, but 16 of the 17 regular employees turned out to be illegal aliens. Maybe milking cows wasn't an exciting occupation for Chinese families rich enough to make a $500,000 investment.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, backed up by the U.S. and Idaho Departments of Commerce and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, traveled to China last year to sell the Chinese on the idea of using EB-5 visas to invest in Idaho. Otter is calling the EB-5 visa a "key element" of his effort to attract new foreign investment to Idaho.

China is trying to build a 10,000- to 30,000-acre "technology zone" south of the Boise airport with full landing rights to the Boise airport, including industry, retail centers and homes leased to the Chinese. This project will have a manufacturing and warehouse zone tied to the airport and may expand with building and financing a fertilizer plant near American Falls, Idaho.

Idaho residents are not happy about Communist China trying to colonize their state. The multibillion-dollar Chinese company initiating this project, Sinomach, has also sent delegations to Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

While more Americans are unemployed, living on food stamps and being foreclosed on, Communist China is trying to buy our land, businesses, homes and natural resources. Our globalist-minded government is assisting with the bait of EB-5 visas.

The free-trade advocates have floated the peculiar notion that we should import foreign students, award them advanced degrees and then give them a green card, so they can legally remain in the United States getting good engineering jobs instead of Americans. Where did the weird idea come from that our country of 300 million people must look to other countries not only for large investors but also for smart graduate students with advanced degrees?

Stapling a green card to foreign students' diplomas has become a favorite one-liner of New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman, Gov. Mitt Romney and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., even introduced a bill called the Staple Act of 2011 (stopping trained-in-America Ph.D.s from leaving the economy).

The Times Square bomber is a good example of the deception that foreigners who attend U.S. universities are "the best and the brightest." He was allowed to stay in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, on the basis of his degree in "computer applications" from a so-so college and was later even granted U.S. citizenship. Fortunately, Faisal Shahzad wasn't bright enough to accomplish his destructive goal.

We've had four nationally televised debates featuring 2012 Republican presidential candidates. It's a mystery why the usually aggressive media interrogators haven't asked any questions about how China is buying its way in America with our money, how free trade is cheating us coming and going, how China is stealing our intellectual property and patents, how China has sold us poisonous and defective products, how China is building a tremendous military machine with U.S. dollars, and the racket of the preferential visas that give jobs to non-Americans.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 09/27/2011 7:32:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

No immigration is not the issue. He is the issue saying if you do not agree with me you are heartless. I will take that from a Democrat but not from someone that claims to be a conservative Republican. He is done as far as getting my support.


2 posted on 09/27/2011 7:36:21 AM PDT by vicar7 ("Polls are for strippers and cross-country skiers" Sarah Palin)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

I am not a fan of this EB-5 visa, but I don’t see the panic in the Chinamen investing big money in a MD casino. If it was such a winner of an idea, I am sure American investors would have jumped at it. This panic seems to be exactly the same thing that happened in the 80’s when everyone was scared the Japanese were taking over when in reality, they were being fleeced.


3 posted on 09/27/2011 7:41:33 AM PDT by Lazlo in PA (Now living in a newly minted Red State.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

It shouldn’t be free for those walking over the border either.


4 posted on 09/27/2011 7:47:12 AM PDT by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Happiness)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Lazlo in PA

Many of these Chinese companies are owned by the People’s Liberation Army and other commie government organs.


5 posted on 09/27/2011 7:48:44 AM PDT by GeronL (The Right to Life came before the Right to Happiness)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: GeronL

They can be ripped off just as easily as anyone else. Just look at the flimsy projects that are being mentioned in the article. They are all destined for failure.


6 posted on 09/27/2011 7:51:36 AM PDT by Lazlo in PA (Now living in a newly minted Red State.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: vicar7

What are you talking about? Who is “he”?


7 posted on 09/27/2011 7:56:29 AM PDT by FoxInSocks (B. Hussein Obama: Central Planning Czar)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: FoxInSocks

He is talking about Rick Perry, our new Benedict Arnold.


8 posted on 09/27/2011 8:00:57 AM PDT by iowamark (Rick Perry says I'm heartless.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Lazlo in PA

The Chinese government and industrialists were willing to take losses for years in order to destroy US industry. A good investment for them, ultimately.

Now they are willing to take losses in order to own US land and insert thousands of Chinese here, very near to our country’s capital. I would not bet on it being a foolish investment.


9 posted on 09/27/2011 8:23:09 AM PDT by heartwood
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
If the Chinese follow the pattern they used in building the San-Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, low-paid Chinese workers will be imported to build and staff the casino.

Say what??

10 posted on 09/27/2011 8:29:11 AM PDT by SteveH (First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: heartwood

Sorry. I lived through the Japan panic and see similarities here. China is a house of cards. While they run around showing off with their cash, the internal country is at a breaking point. You have these hugely wealthy cities surrounded by desperately poor people who are starting to figure out what is going on. China is constructing big cities that are ghost towns just to make busy work for their people. More Western Culture is seeping in than they can control. I will reserve judgement over whether they are taking over the US.


11 posted on 09/27/2011 8:44:32 AM PDT by Lazlo in PA (Now living in a newly minted Red State.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

There’s a big mall in town, That was on the auction block last week with
no bidders. There was one investment group that did express interest in it,
California Green Regional Center.
Anything with the term ”Green”, I’m suspicious of and decided to research them.

This is from their web site:
It is an immigration based regional center approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (approved on July 15, 2010).
It is authorized to provide 500 US green cards to foreign investors, each for an investment of $500k

http://www.cagreenrc.com/index_en.php


12 posted on 09/27/2011 9:40:30 AM PDT by twistedwrench
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
That fertilizer plant is actually on the west end of Pocatello about 7 miles west of the I-15/I-86 interchange. It has great rail connectivity to Boise to the west and other places north, east and south from Pocatello.
13 posted on 09/27/2011 10:25:43 AM PDT by Myrddin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson