Dangers of EB-5 forums
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 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 an experienced professional; or an expat who has been through the process or someone else altogether.
Start 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, 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 concerns over information on an immigration forum.
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 law enforcement agencies after allegedly millions in immigrant funds went missing!
This certainly underlines the importance of knowing the whole picture, rather than taking the single experience of one person as actual fact.
Recently we researched a large immigration site and found that it included much misleading, and worse, totally inaccurate information, including continual cryptic comments from a contributor recommending a particular regional center (some of the programs offered by the center are experiencing well reported financing problems which were not mentioned!) Upon contacting the site administrator, 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 as 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 concerned with this, wondering if those people who were taking advice from this site were aware of this policy of non-responsibility.
Digging 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 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!
The EB-5 Investor Green Card regional center visa program can be an excellent way to quickly become a permanent resident of the United States.
|
