Skip to main content

Featured Post

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park infographics: what's built/what's coming/what's missing, who's responsible, + project FAQ/timeline (pinned post)

Greenland claims U.S. projects funded via EB-5 have "created 20,000 jobs" (!?!)

The Wall Street Journal reports, in China’s Greenland Group Expects Overseas Revenue to Double in 2015: Company the Most Aggressive Chinese Property Developer to Expand Abroad Since 2013:
SHANGHAI—Chinese state-owned conglomerate Greenland Holding Group said Monday it expects to reach its targeted 20 billion yuan ($3.27 billion) in overseas revenue this year, and that its overseas revenue will double in 2015.
Shanghai-based Greenland has been the most aggressive Chinese property developer to expand abroad since 2013, investing a total of $20 billion purchasing land and other real-estate projects in nine countries including Australia, the U.S., the U.K., Canada and South Korea.
Greenland, which isn’t listed on the domestic stock exchange, said it is targeting its overseas revenue to make up a larger portion of the company’s revenue, to exceed 25% of its revenue by 2020....
“In the U.S. for example where our development projects are funded by EB-5 visa funding, preliminary calculations show that these projects have created 20,000 jobs,” Greenland said in a statement.
Oh, really?

Job creation

The EB-5 visa program, in which immigrant investors seeking green cards park $500,000 in a low-interest loan for a purportedly job-creating investment, has rather loose requirements. Those numbers include indirect and induced jobs, all according to a report from a hired economist, not an independent source.

To quote Fortune:
A December 2013 study by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that the government “cannot demonstrate that the program is improving the U.S. economy and creating jobs for U.S. citizens.” A February 2014 paper by the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation concluded that “knowledge of the program’s true economic impact is elusive at best.”
EB-5 deception

Keep in mind that, for "Atlantic Yards III"--the holdover name for the Project Now Known as Pacific Park Brooklyn--the promoters of the EB-5 investment improperly used a U.S. State Department official and otherwise produced a deceptive pitch.

EB-5 absurdity

In other words, as with the second round of Atlantic Yards fundraising, a foreign government is profiting by marketing a scarce U.S. public resource--green card slots under the EB-5 program--to its own citizens.

The other Greenland project in the U.S. is Metropolis in Los Angeles.

Comments