In a search for information on the EB-5 some potential EB-5 visa investors seek out forums as an impartial source of
information. Forums have exploded across the Internet.  Sometimes, immigration forums can seem particularly helpful; the personal voice and conversational manner of them with invited comments and replies can feel reassuring to the reader.  It might seem as if you’ve just made a personal, “expert” friend in exactly the subject you need.  And herein lies some of the top potential dangers of relying on immigration forums as a source of information and advice.

First off anyone—and we do mean anyone—can have a forum .  The person behind an immigration forum could well be a consummate, well-versed, experienced professional; or that person could be an expat who has been through the process or that person could be someone else altogether, with any varying level of experience (including none at all) between the two.

Having researched many immigration forums in-depth, some deep concerns and potential dangers have come to light, starting with knowing who you are dealing with (after all, if you know you are on a regional center’s or company’s website you know who is behind the information and know what to expect; you understand that their motivation is to sell their center and its project(s), and that they are unlikely to highlight the negative points of their business).  On the other hand, if you are reading an expat’s forum, or a forum presumed to be an immigration expert’s, you are coming to it assuming honest, sound advice.  To give you an example of how this can quickly go wrong, here is an account of just one instance in which we found severe concerns over information on an immigration forum.

In our research, we came across a post and subsequent comment thread that was highlighting the fears of scams in regard to the EB-5.  In some ways, the post and highlights were very good, and clearly added to the website’s credibility.  Further on, a question was raised on that same thread regarding a particular individual (agent).  Another (probably well-meaning) subscriber responded by giving feedback of a positive experience with that agent.  Our sincere hope is that no one on that forum followed that commenter’s advice (and our concern is with that anonymous commenter even now), because if they had they would now have serious problems on their hands; the agent concerned is now under investigation by three separate law enforcement agencies after allegedly millions in immigrant funds went missing!

That commenter, in all likelihood, was probably giving what he or she deemed to be honest, genuine, and well-intentioned advice, but it does certainly underline the importance of knowing the whole picture, rather than taking the single experience of one person as fact.  And of course, in such a forum, it is  tough to tell what happened in the future beyond that point—there is no way of knowing what future experience that commenter came to have, which very well may have changed his or her viewpoint considerably!

That one instance is just that, one instance. Recently we researched a large immigration site and found that it included much misleading, and worse, totally inaccurate information.  Upon contacting the site administration, we received this reply:

“…[Website]… does not screen communications in advance and is not responsible for screening or monitoring material posted by Users. Nor do we guarantee the accuracy, integrity, or quality of such User content. Visitors to this site are reminded that the details contained within comments are uncorroborated and as such should not be read as fact but as the opinion of the person who posted the comment, and hence …[Website]…will not be held liable.”

Here is a forum, then, tagging themselves experts in immigration, offering information and advice, and claiming no
responsibility for monitoring the content of their forum’s comments. To say the very least, we became very concerned with this, wondering if those people who were taking advice from this site were aware of this policy of non-responsibility. Delving deeper, we then found that a leading contributor had posted more than 42,000 messages all over the Internet on blogs of all sorts, with topics ranging as wide as from marriage breakups to the state of the world. That is not a piece of information that the average user would come by easily, when all the while they were simply looking for informed and accurate information on immigrating through the EB-5 program! Again, the concern here is in the not knowing, and being fed a lot of EB-5 information from resources that may or may not be who or what they seem.  It is the whole picture that matters, and the knowing that the information you are relying on to make critical life decisions is as reliable as it seems, and as it certainly should be!

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