Thread: In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family flogs $500,000 investor visa to wealthy Chinese

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In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family flogs $500,000 ‘investor visa’ to wealthy Chinese

The event was hosted by the Chinese company Qiaowai, which connects U.S. companies with Chinese investors. (Emily Rauhala/The Washington Post)

By Emily Rauhala May 6 at 7:31 AM

BEIJING — The Kushner family came to the United States as refugees, worked hard and made it big — and if you invest in Kushner properties, so can you.

That was the message delivered Saturday by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s sister to a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors, renewing questions about the Kushner family’s business ties to China.

Over several hours of slideshows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at the Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey real estate project to secure what’s known as an investor visa.

The EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, which allows foreign investors to invest in U.S. projects that create jobs and then apply to immigrate, has been used by both the Trump and Kushner family businesses.

But President Trump’s vow to crack down on immigration, as well as criticism from members of Congress, has led to questions about the future of a program known here as the “golden visa.”

The reception desk at the Ritz-Carlton. (Emily Rauhala/The Washington Post)

The EB-5 has been extremely popular among rich Chinese who are eager to get their families — and their wealth — out of the country, though the fact that some move their money out illegally has made the program unpopular with the Chinese government, too.

In the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton on Saturday, Chinese investors were advised to invest sooner rather than later in case the rules change. “Invest early, and you will invest under the old rules,” one speaker said.

The woman identified as “Jared’s sister” was believed to be Nicole Kushner, who is involved in the family business, not Dara Kushner, who generally stays out of the spotlight. But the woman’s face was not clearly visible from the back of the ballroom, where reporters were told to remain.

Saturday’s event in Beijing was hosted by the Chinese company Qiaowai, which connects U.S. companies with Chinese investors. The tagline on a brochure for the event: “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.”

Qiaowai is working with Kushner to secure funding for Kushner 1, a real estate project in New Jersey. Promotional materials tout the buildings’ proximity to Manhattan and note that the project will create more than 6,000 jobs.

“This project has stable funding, creates sufficient jobs and guarantees the safety of investors’ money,” one description reads.
Although there was no visible reference to Trump, the materials noted the Kushner family’s “celebrity” status. Wang Yun, a Chinese investor who attended the event, said the Kushner family’s ties to Trump, via son-in-law Jared, were a part of the project’s appeal — but also a source of concern.

Who is Jared Kushner?
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Jared Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law but he's also one of his key confidants. Here's a closer look at the president's senior advisor. (Video: Deirdra O'Regan/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

“Even though this is the project of the son-in-law’s family, of course it is still affiliated,” Wang.

Wang reasoned that the link to Trump would be a boon if the presidency goes well but could be disastrous if it does not: “We heard that there are rumors that he is the most likely to be impeached president in American history. That’s why I doubt this project.”

Many of the people who attended the event declined to be interviewed, citing privacy concerns, or were blocked by organizers from speaking to the news media.

Though the event was publicly advertised in Beijing, the hosts were exceptionally anxious about the presence of reporters.Journalists were initially seated at the back of the ballroom, but as the presentations got underway, a public-relations representative asked The Washington Post to leave, saying the presence of foreign reporters threatened the “stability” of the event.

At one point, organizers grabbed a reporter’s phone and backpack to try to force that person to leave. Later, as investors started leaving the ballroom, organizers physically surrounded attendees to stop them from giving interviews.

Asked why reporters were asked to leave, a public-relations representative, who declined to identify herself, said simply, “This is not the story we want.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.798604d96fac

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Congcong Zhang reported from Beijing.

Eeeeew. Oh stop this, please!! But here's the reason they do it, Americans don't have any money. To finance your projects is hard to impossible sometimes. So people doing projects look outside the US for reverse investment to tap into foreign investment. This visa is a carrot to help try to lure that money into our country.

But what would be better for our country is for Trump's Agenda to get through, that would bring trillions of capital back to the US and a percentage of that would be available for new development projects. New development projects are very important, they are what turn blighted areas into new beautiful profitable sections of our inner cities and even smaller communities across the country. We all want that, but capital is tight because our country is so broke and so much money is controlled by the banks who are nightmare for developers to work with,

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Originally Posted by Judy

Eeeeew. Oh stop this, please!! But here's the reason they do it, Americans don't have any money. To finance your projects is hard to impossible sometimes. So people doing projects look outside the US for reverse investment to tap into foreign investment. This visa is a carrot to help try to lure that money into our country.

But what would be better for our country is for Trump's Agenda to get through, that would bring trillions of capital back to the US and a percentage of that would be available for new development projects. New development projects are very important, they are what turn blighted areas into new beautiful profitable sections of our inner cities and even smaller communities across the country. We all want that, but capital is tight because our country is so broke and so much money is controlled by the banks who are nightmare for developers to work with,

Citizenship for sale cheapens our country. IMO

Citizenship for sale cheapens our country. IMO

It all cheapens our country, we're a supply and demand nation, when you have too much supply of something, there is no demand for it because it has no value. We have far too much supply of immigration without any demand. Immigration has no value, we need a 10 to 20 Year Moratorium on All Immigration, and we need it ... NOW.

Trump Sibling-in-Law Plays Princeling in China

May 8, 2017

David North


Nicole Meyer (younger sister of President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner) may have been obtuse about the American optics in Beijing on Saturday, but she was spot-on with the Chinese culture when she pitched a crowd of rich Chinese about her family's latest EB-5 investment in Jersey City, N.J., right across the Hudson from mid-town Manhattan.


After all, the Chinese expect the children of national leaders (the so-called "princelings") to be prosperous and well-connected. (Meyer, of course, is not a direct descendent, but is an in-law to one, Ivanka Trump.)


Both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported this morning that Meyer participated in EB-5 sales meetings in Beijing on Saturday and in Shanghai on Sunday. Both papers reported that their reporters had been "kicked out" of the Saturday session.

Something like 90 percent of those putting up half a million dollars for a set of green cards through the EB-5 program are from China.


The Times reported:

Nicole Meyer cited her brother's service to the company, which he led as chief executive until January. She said that the project in Jersey City "means a lot to me and my entire family."

This prospective luxury apartment building is One Journal Square (and thus near to a commuter rail station leading to both Wall Street and mid-town Manhattan) and is not to be confused with Trump Bay Street, an earlier Jersey City Kushner development that used the Trump name under a licensing agreement. There are to be 1,500 luxury apartments in the first of the two buildings to be constructed at Journal Square.


Subsequently a U.S.-based publicist for the Kushner Companies sent an email to the Post saying that it "apologizes if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Ms. Meyer's intention."


It was a bad four days for those seeking to reform the controversial, scandal-ridden EB-5 program. On Thursday the president signed an omnibus appropriations bill that kept the central part of EB-5 alive until September 30 of this year; on Friday that law went into effect; Saturday was the Beijing event; and Sunday was the Shanghai one.


http://cis.org/north/trump-sibling-l...inceling-china

Kushner Company a No-Show at China Visa Event After Ethics Uproar