Posted on 05/07/2015 12:23:32 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
A company co-founded by presidential son Neil Bush is recruiting foreigners to invest in Texas apartment complexes in return for a coveted U.S. visa under a program initiated during his father's administration 25 years ago.
The Great Texas Regional Center, which initially planned to build minor league baseball stadiums, has gathered money from more than a dozen foreigners seeking to live in the United States indefinitely under the so-called investor visa, or EB5, program.
The program, established in 1990 under a law signed by President George H.W. Bush, grants green cards to foreigners who invest as little as $500,000 in an American business. The program has drawn increased scrutiny as a result of a Homeland Security Inspector General's report charging that officials exerted improper influence on behalf of immigrant investor regional centers with political connections.
The report cited three instances of improper influence in favor of regional center applicants, including one for whom Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe lobbied heavily. At the time, McAuliffe was involved in an electric car manufacturing firm that was seeking foreign investors.
The report cited “extraordinary treatment” given to Gulf Coast Funds Management by Alejandro Mayorkas, the No. 2 official in the Department of Homeland Security. Mayorkas headed the division overseeing the investor visa program.
Roger Christoph, manager of Great Texas, said Neil Bush, 60, has not been involved in the firm since 2013. Neil Bush co-founded the firm in 2010 and was board chairman. Christoph said Bush has no ownership interest in the regional center.
Bush, according to published reports, made several trips to China to recruit investors for Great Texas. The company displays Bush's biography, with a description about his role with Great Texas, prominently on its website.
Charles C. Foster, an attorney for Great Texas, said in a recent interview that a plan to build baseball stadiums was dropped in favor of investing in apartment complexes. The first, a 385-unit complex in Dallas known as Aura Cedar Springs, is under construction. Others are planned in several other Texas cities, including Midland and San Angelo, Foster said.
Christoph, who had a background in developing minor league baseball parks, said he learned of the investor visa program in 2009 and thought it might be a way to fund stadium projects. But he found that potential investors, primarily from mainland China, were not interested in the idea, he said.
“(Chinese investors) have strong preferences, with regard to project characteristics,” Christoph wrote in an email. “A minor league baseball facility does not fall within those parameters. Multi-unit residential projects and hotel projects seem to be more acceptable and have been our preference during the last two years.”
Federal records obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request show that in 2013, the baseball park proposal attracted funding from only one investor.
Since the switch to apartment complexes, Foster said, 14 applications have been filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on behalf of investors.
An Immigration Services records request for Great Texas produced more than 100 pages of documents, most of them heavily redacted.
The original plan called for minor league ballparks and sports venues in cities including Amarillo, Houston, Denton and Laredo. The Laredo project was to produce 366 jobs. The plan included a theme park called Earthquest Institute.
Immigration officials, the files show, researched Neil Bush's background and included documents related to his involvement in a failed Colorado savings and loan. One article detailed Bush being sued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Great Texas' application to be a designated regional center was approved Dec. 13, 2011. Nationwide, about 646 regional centers have been approved.
Jeb's son, George P. Bush [newly elected Texas Land Commissioner]
"George Prescott Bush (born April 24, 1976) is an American attorney, U.S. Navy Reserve officer, real estate investor and politician who serves as the Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office. He is the eldest child of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the nephew of former President George W. Bush, and the grandson of former President George H. W. Bush. George Prescott is also named for his great-grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush.....
"Bush currently manages St. Augustine Partners, an energy and technology-focused investment firm in Fort Worth. Previously, he co-founded Pennybacker Capital, LLC, a real estate-focused private equity firm in Austin. The company was originally named N3 Capital and headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas....."
"......Pennybacker Capital and its predecessor companies have a proven ten-year track record investing in and/or operating over 100 commercial and multifamily real estate properties located throughout the United States, and have sponsored three discretionary real estate private equity funds.
Pennybacker Capital invests in and operates middle-market multifamily, retail, office and industrial assets in sustainable U.S. growth markets. Pennybacker Capital targets mismanaged, miscapitalized, or other situationally distressed properties and debt instruments that are complex, off-market, and/or undervalued."
Can we wrap up Hillary and Obama and McCain and McConnell and graham and sharpton and barf or Harf and pelosi and Feinstein and boxer and fatty Moore and reverend wright and Chomsky and cair and wassetmsnSchultz and Reid and holder and holders replacement and all the islamonazis and Muslim brothers and PLO and pa and Hamas and hezbellah and Isis and Iran and Saudi and the gungrabber freaks and shoot the entire dungpile up in a rocket to Uranus maybe? Obama can help them resettle up there since it’s probably his real birthplace he knows the lay of the land there.
This makes sense when you consider that the Bush family is owned by foreign powers in the first place.
Is that the same Neil Bush who was mixed up in the Silverado Savings and Loan thingy in the 80s?
From the article:
“Immigration officials, the files show, researched Neil Bush’s background and included documents related to his involvement in a failed Colorado savings and loan. One article detailed Bush being sued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.”
Thanks for your note.
I was nearly done replying but got cut off.
I am now too tired to do it all over sorry but basically I agree with reducing immigration during recessions or depressions ..... and like now when we have nearly 100 million unemployed American citizens
also we need to send the ‘immigrants’ from the world’s 57 Islamonnazi or Islamic nations back to their various homelands.
They are coming here mostly for just one purpose ...
they are trained from birth to do this...
look at France and you’ll see the American future if we don’t send them home ASAP
our time is running out.
meanwhile, prepare to defend yourself, your family, and your home
all the best,
Hopeless in America [Why are we bringing sand to the beach?]
“we” are importing millions of aliens when there are no jobs for “our own people”
because
there is no longer any “we” in America
rather, there is the ruling elite (”them”)
and
those of us American citizens who still have to, or wish to, work for a living (”us”)
its a them/us country, not a “we” nation any longer
and worst of all, the ruling elite is far, far from benevolently inclinded concerning us
indeed, exactly the contrary, they are our enemies
and they have nothing but contempt for us
Obama, Boehner, Pelosi, Reid, McConnell , Holder,..etc.
They view the American people, or most of us anyway, with contempt, as sheeple to be sheered (and slaughtered if we raise any objections to the sheering)
at any event, forget about “we”
it is now but a memory, it is now an illusion
see things as they now really are
and
you will be much more effective at dealing with it
Our freedoms are being methodically stripped away.
exactly so
They want money, iPhones, white chicks, welfare. They want better clientele to sell drugs to (us). They want America to be just a big service provider for the 3rd world. They want our universities, our wealth. They don't stop to consider that all of this will be gone once we are gone. Then it's back to pounding sand and camels in the desert, or living in trees or whatever they plan to do after America is gutted.
Nah. Uranus is a big, cold gas ball. No solid surface. It’d take years to get there. Send them to the Moon or Mars. They’re big cold hunks of rock. They’d all be just fine on either and it’s pretty much a short hop. Three or four days to the Moon, six or seven months to Mars.
yes, but nobody here wants any of them that damned close to us!
ps: and besides, all these lying politicians will feel very much at home on the “big cold gas ball’ (Uranus)
“big cold greedly lying gas ball” comes very close to a perfect description of them all....
Very in depth article. Too bad the MSM won’t do such a thing with the Clinton Foundation.
Corruption? An act of love, I suppose.
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.