A major theme here at Liberty Blitzkrieg over the past year has been the creative ways in which corrupt Chinese oligarchs and government officials are maneuvering their way into the United States. To be clear, I am not anti-immigration by any stretch of the imagination. My mother was an immigrant. This is about being against corrupt and morally compromised individuals being welcomed here with open arms just because they have cash. We have enough domestic criminal oligarchs as it stands. These people have collectively captured the American political and economic system and control it to their own ends. Do we really need to import more of these types from abroad?
Did you know that there exists a federal Immigrant Investor Program that grants “EB-5” immigration visas to foreigners who provide at least $500,000 to U.S. projects that create 10 or more American jobs? I wasn’t familiar with this, but apparently the good folks at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission are well aware of it, and are using it to raise $200 million.
Here’s what I’d like to know. Who are these investors and who vets them? It is a known fact that corrupt Chinese officials and businessmen are scrambling to get themselves and their money out of their homeland as the government cracks down on corruption. How many of them are going to use this program to get into the U.S., and what will be the long-term impact to our society? Important questions that must be asked, but most likely aren’t being taken seriously.
From Philly.com:
Chinese investors have begun signing up to spend $500,000 each to help pay for a long-awaited connection between the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I-95.
In exchange, the investors hope to get permanent residency in the United States for themselves and their families.
The heavily indebted Turnpike Commission is borrowing the $200 million from foreign investors under the federal Immigrant Investor Program that grants “EB-5” immigration visas to foreigners who provide at least $500,000 to U.S. projects that create 10 or more American jobs.
The foreign investors and their families will get a quick path to legal residence in the United States, though they may lose money on their investment.
The brokers and lawyers will collect millions in commissions and fees, with each of the 400 investors paying $50,000 to the dealmakers and $15,000 to the lawyers.
At least someone’s getting paid.
The first $50 million installment from the foreign investors is due to be paid to the Turnpike Commission by April.
The Berwyn company created to make the deal, the Delaware Valley Regional Center, expects to meet that deadline, said Joseph P. Manheim, its managing director.
“It is going as we had planned,” he said. “We are on track.”
The deal was suggested to turnpike officials by Turnpike Commissioner Pasquale T. “Pat” Deon Sr., a Bucks County restaurateur, beer distributor, and Republican power broker. Deon, who also is chairman of the board of SEPTA, saw SEPTA make a similar deal to borrow $175 million to pay for its smart-card fare-payment system in 2011.
Similar EB-5 foreign-investor deals have provided funding for the Convention Center, the Temple University Health System, and the Comcast Center.
The turnpike deal was created by Manheim and other officials of the Swarthmore Group, a Philadelphia investment-management firm headed by James E. Nevels, a prominent Republican donor and fund-raiser.
Here’s the best part. You ready for this one…
Nevels is chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and was the first chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, appointed by Republican Gov. Mark Schweiker. Nevels is also a former president of the Pennsylvania Society, the organization best known for its annual Manhattan gathering of Pennsylvania politicians, lobbyists, and business people.
Naturally, a member of the Federal Reserve System would be somehow involved in this scheme. When bankers run into trouble, these clowns don’t waste any time in coming up with trillions in backstops and bailouts. However, when American plebs need a highway, we have no choice but to get on our knees and grovel to the Chinese.
As I mentioned at the top, this has been a theme on the site all year. Check out these previous posts on the topic:
Chinese Purchases of U.S. Real Estate Jump 72% as The Bank of China Facilitates Money Laundering
Zillow Opens the Floodgates to Chinese Buyers in Order to Keep Housing Bubble 2.0 Inflated
Corrupt Chinese Politicians are Buying Billions in U.S. Real Estate
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Cronyism . It has been alive and well on the PTC my entire 50 years of life and has not changed. They keep borrowing from the tolls to finance road projects throughout the state. bet you never knew that one either did you? Tolls go up every year guaranteed
Perhaps this is another way to use black box funding and the like to buy loyal new citizens to do the serial criminal intelligence gathering work.
about the corrupt Chinese financing their way in to controlling America, the only thing I have heard about actual examples of this is stories circulating within the “local”, smaller-scale, and organic farming communities in the USA which describe large tracts of viable farmland in CA and water rights ewhich the Chinese are buying at record-breaking speed. Supposedly the highest purchaser country of US farmland is China. This forebodes very negative consequences not far down the road. We already have a crisis in farming and food supply systems feel threatened by possible breaks in the steady supply of oil which moves America’s food supply all over the world including to our neighborhood’s store shelves. This one fact, the vulnerability of America’s food supply due to fragility of oil supply, is the genesis of the “local” food movement in the first place. Add on top of this the emerging water supply crisis, potable water crisis (two separate crises), and now these same smaller producers, who have been attempting to create jobs and make a living, are also being threatened by the farm-land-grab going on. The costs of growing food on a less-than mega scale is prohibitive – water rights alone should be considered a national resource we should never let go. Land – esp farmland, should never be sold to anyone, no matter how broke we are and how much cash they have. This is another way America is destroying itself.
The Bush family has been buying up farming land and water rights in South America. There are no borders when it comes to the rich controlling everything.
From what I hear, the extent or degree of Chinese purchasing of American farmland (and infrastructure) is going to be catastrophic when the chips are down. We need to be able of controlling the means, quality, and use of own food supply and food producing infrastructure. What is happening with China in America is so far beyond the Bush family’s investments that it is a mystery why more media does not cover this.
If nothing is done about this in the near-term, we are going to have China-style corruption here and basically be owned by China.
Scary. Not sure what to do about any of it, though. The situation seems pretty hopeless to me.
My cousins live in Sydney and have told me the corrupt Chinese have bought millions of land in Australia and a large lake above Sydney which is the water supply for millions. And now I here they have bought land here. THats what happens when we borrow money from them They scratch our backs we scratch theirs. We Lose
very cogent remark Susan M. That is exactly what is happening in multiple areas – the US government is directly selling off public utilities, our ports, infrastracture (massive commercial building complexes) all over America, some times it is local bankrupt cities like Stockton and SoCal, Detroit. There are huge pools of municipal defaults waiting to happen which will result in literally selling off America. Other times it is the US government which sells its own assets under the radar without even involving congress or public knowledge. Other times, it is corporations which, in order to survive, will sell to other countries which ends up meaning traditional American namestake businesses become foreign owned, foreign employees, and foreign profits happening right here on our soil. The list of these companies is too long to mention. America does not make anything anymore so it is just a matter of time before most of us will be required to accept subsidies just in order to continue to live. One thing I have noticed is that the moral structure of individuals has eroded…..different people are more or less capable of adapting to shrinking options and resources inside their own lives, and all too often, they end up making little choices here and there which are morally questionable, ethically corrupt, and these little death by a thousand paper cuts essentially transforms people from someone you would want in your family to someone you don’t recognize any more. I have to mention one significant factor in this and that is the widespread (and increasing) abuse of mood altering substances – alcohol and pain pills. Our society is so many times more abusive of these than any other country that the facts will blow you away (87% of world’s supply with a tiny fraction of the population of the world). The point here is that wish more people would realize how destructive our addictions are to our character as people and a nation. I am surrounded by people who abuse alcohol and don’t realize how it affects their performance as citizens, spouses, parents, employees, and moral citizens of the world capable of helping us all out of this mess. I won’t be here much longer but this one issue is near and dear to my heart, having been a substance abuse counselor decades ago and watching this emerge again as a major problem in America.