The Wall Street Journal today has a story on the slow loss of interest by Chinese, who were the major beneficiaries of this program to grant legal immigration status to people who put money into US programs. It had a good intent, but quickly became a boondoggle for a large group of people who were buying their residency at the expense of all the others who couldn't afford it. They can then use their status to sponsor others to come to the US.
Now Congress is about to limit this largess and crack down on some of the abusers, mostly in New York, California and Texas. The Chinese are not very interested since it is taking a long time (up to 14 years) to get a US visa. Applications went from 4000+ to 617 this year. Good. This is selling legal status to the rich and must have made people in other countries wonder what we were doing.
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