USA to Immigrants: Stay Away, But Send Money

There was once a time when America was a beacon for the poor and downtrodden from around the world. There was so much opportunity here that streets paved with gold was a popular metaphor for those who came, many with little more than the shirts on their backs.

Now, thanks to the unholy combination of immigration law and the fiction that government creates jobs -- which is a fig leaf for choosing winners and then taxing them -- America is instead becoming a land of thieves who fill their bank accounts with the money of those who want to come.

Consider a recent lawsuit regarding a Ponzi scheme made possible by a type of visa and an economic "development" program:

The proposed class action says that although the partnership between Jay Peak and the Vermont Regional Center would see hundreds of millions of dollars flow into the state, exorbitant amounts of money within the broader project were also "misspent, misused, and flat-out stolen" in connection with the Ponzi scheme, which "touched every dollar invested," the plaintiffs state.

This is Jay Peak. To see a lineup of the elected officials who supported this scam, visit the Burlington Free Press and scroll down. (Image by Runningonbrains, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)

"The Vermont contractors were paid. The Burke hotel continues to generate revenue for the State of Vermont. Both were paid for by the Burke Investors who have nothing left of their investment and have not been compensated in any way."

Filed by immigrant investors from Chad, Columbia, Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico, Vietnam and Canada seeking U.S. residency through the EB-5 visa program, which enables immigrant investors to invest up to $500,000 into U.S.-based projects in the hopes of obtaining green cards, the lawsuit alleges that in 2015, during the final phase of the Ponzi scheme, Vermont and its co-defendants took money from those who invested in a hotel to be built at Burke Mountain and used the funds to complete the hotel, pay contractors and "facilitate the tax revenues that the State continues to enjoy today." [bold added]

Could you imagine what would happen if a private concern promised to help potential immigrants come on the condition of paying into an "investment" whose funds it would "safeguard?" Anyone with a grain of sense would stay the hell away, but this is the government, and too many people around the world -- led by Americans of all the world's peoples -- naively trust "the government."

This scheme would have been much harder to pull off without that "immigration" program as bait for the "investors" and juicy tax money to corrupt or lull the state officials who were supposed to make sure the invested money went where it was supposed to go.

America got rich because she was free and the people who came here could do productive work and trade with one another. A gang of thieves didn't barricade Ellis Island and charge extortionate entry fees to partly siphon off and partly "invest" in preexisting businesses so they could skim those profits some more.

But that's happening today. This glaring synergy between improper government and crime is a complete inversion of what this country is all about, and a mockery of America's founding ideals.

-- CAV