EB5 Investors Magazine | Page 72

[ IMMIGRATION ATTORNEYS ] Angelo Paparelli has been engaged with EB-5 issues since 1990, when the Immigrant Investor Program was first established. In the early days, Angelo focused on troubleshooting problems that arose as a result of open questions that floated around the EB-5 community with no easy answers. By the end of that first decade, he had established a regional center. He is now a partner in the firm Sayfarth Shaw, LLP, where he primarily works with regional centers and project developers, and, to a lesser extent, with individual investors. Angelo is known throughout the EB-5 industry as someone equipped to take on difficult cases and handle RFEs. With a background in international business and tax issues, Angelo brings unique expertise to the EB-5 field. Angelo prides himself on visualizing creative solutions to intricate problems. He has learned that the complexities of EB-5 arise in large part from the lack of published governmental regulations on the program, and the resulting plethora of nonbinding guidance. In order to be persuasive, without having a substantial body of EB-5-related law available for citation, Angelo relies on logic, analogy, and his broad knowledge of other law categories where interpretations have been settled. To support his work in the EB-5 community, Angelo runs a free monthly telephone roundtable on regional centers, intended for experts in the EB-5 arena to discuss specific issues In the late 1990s, Mona Shah took on her first EB-5 case for a U.K. couple that gravitated to her immigrant background. She had previously immigrated to the United States from the United Kingdom, working her way up as single mother, without any legal or business contacts in the United States, to become a respected immigration lawyer. Thanks to those first clients, Mona entered into and has continued in the EB-5 industry, building a successful career that includes founding New York City’s first regional center in 2008. At her firm, Mona Shah & Associates, Mona and her team counsel hundreds of clients spanning four different continents on EB-5 matters. Mona’s practice covers everything EB-5, from structuring and drafting offering documents, to liaising with overseas agents, to marketing overseas and filing USCIS petitions. The firm equally represents projects, investors and regional centers. Mona and her team also act as co-counsel for many lawyers who are just beginning in EB-5, and often troubleshoot for both regional centers and attorneys. Mona’s 17-year immigration law background includes immigration deportation and litigation, as well as business immigration. She notes that EB-5 continues to be an exciting area that involves knowledge of business and marketing, as well as immigration and country conditions. Mona’s ability to view the EB-5 program from both legal and business standpoints has fueled her success, and her international history has uniquely 70 Angelo Paparelli in detail. He has found that a do-it-yourself mentality in the EB-5 community often leads to problem cases and RFEs, which might have been prevented. He hopes that those interested in EB-5 will navigate its ambiguities by relying on the experience of professionals. Angelo is an avid writer and co-edited Forming and Operating a Regional Center: A Guide for Developers and Business Innovators. He also was named by Chambers and Partners as California’s only “Star” Immigration Attorney in 2014. You can find Angelo’s musing on all things immigration law on his blog Nation of Immigrators. When he is not practicing law, he enjoys yoga, fitness, theater and spending time with his wife and two daughters. Mona Shah equipped her to market her regional centers overseas. As a woman in what she refers to as the “old boys club” of EB-5, Mona is proud of her professional accomplishments, which include winning Acquisition International Magazine’s 2014 Global Mobility & Immigration Awards in the Immigration Appeals Category. She regularly speaks on EB-5 investment at seminars overseas, and has appeared on television, podcasts and radio programs. Mona is also an adjunct professor at Baruch University in New York City, which will be the first city university to offer an EB-5 specialized course geared towards developers, practitioners and all interested people. EB5 INVESTORS MAGAZINE