Susan L. Pilcher is a senior attorney with the EB-5 practice group at Stone Grzegorek & Gonzalez LLP in Los Angeles, California. Her practice focuses on business and investment immigration. Ms. Pilcher counsels and represents clients in a diverse range of investment-related immigration matters, ranging from working with entrepreneurs on nonimmigrant status and long-range strategic planning, to preparing I-526 and I-829 petitions and template filings, to guiding developers in the preparation of investment offerings suitable for EB-5 funding, developing I-924 regional center applications, and counseling regional centers and developers on ongoing compliance issues.
Ms. Pilcher’s investment immigration clients have included individual E-2 and EB-5 investors from 40 countries, EB-5 project developers, USCIS-designated regional centers, and regional center applicants. Her general business immigration practice has been devoted substantially to the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program since early 2007. She additionally has extensive experience with both routine and complex consular processing and border adjudications, and with servicing the business immigration needs of large and small companies, including hospitals, a Fortune fastest growing company, and large multinational enterprises.
A widely published author and frequent speaker on investment immigration topics, Ms. Pilcher’s background includes more than 20 years of immigration law experience; in addition to her private immigration practice, her experience includes several years of commercial law practice and nearly a decade of full-time law teaching (including immigration law). She is also a current member of the editorial board for the English Edition of EB5 Investors Magazine. Ms. Pilcher earned her bachelor’s degree cum laude from Smith College. She received her Juris Doctor with distinction from Stanford Law School, where she won the Hilmer Oehlmann, Jr. Award for Legal Research and Writing and was managing editor of the Stanford Law Review.
On April 22, 2015, the USCIS Immigrant Investor Program Office ("IPO") issued a public statement defining its interpretation of the EB-5 regulation as it applies to the use of loan proceeds as capital. Susan Pilcher breaks down the USCIS "indebtedness" policy, how it is applied, and what stakeholders and investors can expect....
