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administrative law, commercial law (ucc), environmental law, governments, immigration law, international trade law, and securities law

INTRODUCTION The Employment Creation Immigrant Visa ("EB-5") is a United States Customs and Immigration Services ("USCIS") administered immigrant investor program that can and should mature into an optimized ethical financial instrument of sustainable capitalism. 3 With this evolution, EB-5 can be used to kick-start domestic investment in anticipatory design and construction of resilient "green" infrastructure. It can do this via investment in the regeneration and maintenance of a healthy environment, while creating perpetual local employment. By identifying and prototyping best practices via this application of EB-5 to federally mandated nonpoint source storm water management, the State of Vermont could serve as a model for scaling up this application throughout the U.S. The EB-5 program was conceived to grant citizenship to those with proven facility in turning capital into jobs. 4 As envisaged by Congress, EB-5 permits these investors to provide this expertise by indirection via a requisite investment, cash, or its equivalent at risk with no hedging, and arms-length policy oversight. 5 Though the program is of long standing, and well supported by Congress, it suffers from fundamental conflicts of opposing values, underutilization, and inefficiency due to lack of focus on what constitutes appropriate foreign investment in genuine domestic job growth; as well as how to measure that growth. In addition, it appears that the USCIS' expertise in immigration--administered under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS")--is matched by its inability to master the many, varied, and constantly evolving ways and ...