by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Herbert Raymond McMaster and Ibrahim Kalin
Istanbul : The Turkish President’s Security and Foreign Policy Adviser Ibrahim Kalin met US National Security Adviser Herbert Raymond McMaster here and discussed issues that are hurting bilateral ties, the Turkish media reported on Sunday.
Joint efforts against terrorism, long-term strategic partnership between Turkey and the US, and the latest developments in the region were among the topics under discussion, Xinhua news agency reported quoting the Hurriyet daily.
The meeting came as Turkey is fighting for Afrin, a district in northwestern Syria being held by US-backed Kurdish militia known as People’s Protection Units (YPG), since January 20. Ankara has threatened to move on to target YPG-held Manbij, while Washington has refused to withdraw the troops from the town as demanded by its NATO ally.
As part of efforts to ease tension in bilateral ties and avoid a direct confrontation in Syria, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is expected to visit Ankara in the coming days, while Turkish and US Defence Ministers are scheduled to meet in Brussels next week.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Corey Blackman,
Washington : President Donald Trump signed a $400 billion budget deal Friday that ended an hours-long government shutdown.
“Just signed Bill. Our Military will now be stronger than ever before. We love and need our Military and gave them everything — and more. First time this has happened in a long time. Also means JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!,” Trump tweeted shortly after signing the legislation.
He sent a successive tweet to try to deflect attention from the massive spending increases he signed into law that he and Republicans railed against during former President Barack Obama’s time in office.
“Without more Republicans in Congress, we were forced to increase spending on things we do not like or want in order to finally, after many years of depletion, take care of our Military,” he said.
The bill includes $300 billion additional spending on the military and domestic agencies. It also raises the country’s debt ceiling that prevents a first-ever default by the federal government.
The House of Representatives passed the bill in a 240-186 vote to end the shutdown in the wee hours of the morning while most Americans were asleep.
The Senate had already approved the bipartisan spending legislation that will extend funding to the government through March 23 and boost disaster aid funding by around $90 billion for Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico that were battered by hurricanes last year.
The spending spikes were passed on the heels of a massive $1.5 trillion tax break passed last month. Combined with the lower tax revenues from those cuts, raising the debt ceiling and the increased spending, economists are concerned the federal deficit will break the $1 trillion barrier sometime during the next fiscal year.
Republican Senator Rand Paul, who made a career of denouncing Obama’s spending, stuck to his fiscal conservative guns and attacked the bill from the chamber’s floor.
“I ran for office because I was very critical of President Obama’s trillion-dollar deficits,” he said. “Now we have Republicans hand in hand with Democrats offering us trillion-dollar deficits. I can’t in all honesty look the other way,”
The brief shutdown follows a three-day shutdown last month that came about because of many of the same spending and social issues.
Missing from the deal was a plan to protect an estimated 800,000 so-called “Dreamers” who were brought to the U.S. as children without proper documentation.
Their fate was thrown into limbo last September after Trump rescinded Obama’s immigration policy known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). He gave Congress until early March to produce a replacement.
But Trump signaled Friday that talks on DACA would begin.
“Fortunately, DACA not included in this bill, negotiations to start now!” he tweeted.
—AA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
New York : Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump pledged to strengthen security and economic cooperation and build on the Indo-Pacific partnership, according to the White House.
While discussing on telephone on Thursday bilateral cooperation, they looked forward to the “2+2 Meeting” of Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj with US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in April, a White House statement said.
“The leaders pledged to continue working together to enhance security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region,” the statement said. “Affirming President Trump’s South Asia strategy, they reiterated their commitment to supporting Afghanistan’s security and stability.”
In their review of the South Asia and Indo-Pacific regions, the statement said: “Both leaders expressed concern about the political crisis in Maldives and the importance of respect for democratic institutions and rule of law.”
On Afghanistan, which was the keystone of the South Asia Strategy announced in August 2017, they reiterated their commitment to back efforts to support the violence-hit nation’s security and stability.
Closer to India, they discussed ways to address the plight of the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and the situation in that country, the statement said.
On North Korea, an issue at the top of US foreign policy priorities, the two leaders discussed further steps to denuclearise Pyongyang.
While China is backing Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen amid a political crisis, New Delhi and Washington share a common perspective and want a return to democracy and an end to the state of Emergency declared by Yameen on Monday.
After the Supreme Court overturned the terrorism conviction of former President Mohamed Nasheed as well as the convictions of eight other politicians on several charges, Yameen clamped the Emergency.
Two of the five Supreme Court judges were arrested by government forces and the other three overturned their unanimous ruling ordering the release of the nine politicians.
As part of his South Asia strategy, Trump wanted India to provide more aid to Afghanistan.
He also put Islamabad on notice for harbouring terrorists, and followed it up last month by withholding security assistance to Pakistan estimated at over $1 billion.
In the Indo-Pacific region, Trump is promoting cooperation between the four democracies – India, the US, Japan and Australia – to be a countervailing force to China.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Investing
By Aroonim Bhuyan,
New Delhi : Though the US Congress has extended the deadline for the EB5 visa, popularly known as the “Golden Visa”, that allows foreign nationals to apply for a green card by investing in the US, experts are of the view that the investment limits under this scheme are likely to be increased in February.
The US Congress last week extended the deadline for the EB5 visa to February 8 after the latest deadline expired on January 19.
Introduced in 1990, the EB5 visa programme allows an individual to invest $500,000 in either of two Targeted Employment Areas (TEAs) — a high unemployment area in a US metropolis or a rural area outside of a metro — or $1 million in a non-TEA area that can create 10 or more jobs, and get US citizenship in a shorter time than H1-B visa holders.
With US President Donald Trump calling for stricter norms for issuance of H1-B visas, largely availed by Indian IT firms, the EB5 visa has been in demand for the shorter route to citizenship it offers.
A private member’s bill was also introduced last year in the US Congress by Democrat Zoe Lofgren which seeks to increase the minimum salary of an H1-B visa holder to a whopping $130,000 from the current minimum of $60,000.
At the same time, the EB5 visa programme has also come under controversy with critics saying that it puts up US citizenship for sale. Authorisation for the EB5 programme has been carried on a temporary basis on Congressional spending bills since September 2015.
Now, experts say that after the latest deadline expires, investment limits of both the $500,000 and $1 million variants are likely to be increased.
According to Pankaj Joshi, Managing Director of Nysa Capital that deals with EB5 applicants, there are reportedly three proposals doing the rounds.
One proposal calls for hiking the $500,000 limit to $800,000 and $1 million limit to $1.2 million. A second proposal calls for hiking the limits to $925,000 and $1.025 million, while the third seeks to increase these to $1.3 million and $1.8 million, respectively.
So, if a hike is effected, will there be a dip in the number of Indian applicants for the EB5 visa?
“Yes, there will be a short-term dip in the applications, but depending on what level is (of the investment limit),” Joshi told IANS.
“If it goes from $500,000 to $800,000, there will be a smaller dip. Even $925,000 will see a smaller dip but if it goes to $1.3 million, there will be a large dip,” he said.
India ranks third after China and Vietnam in terms of the number of applicants for the EB5 visas. A total of 10,000 such visas are issued every year with the limit capped at 700 for one country.
According to Mark Davies, Global Chairman of Davies and Associates which also deals with EB5 applicants, the number of Indian clients his firm handled increased from 99 in 2014 to 238 in 2015 and over 330 in 2016. “I expect this to be 500-plus in 2017,” he said.
Davies explained that there are two ways in which an investor can apply for an EB5 visa — either through regional centres, which hold licences and are authorised to implement projects under the EB5 visa scheme — or outside of the regional centres.
The advantage of working with regional centres is that the jobs created under the project concerned can be counted, he said.
But on the flip side, there can be responsible or irresponsible regional centres “just as a person holding a driving licence can drive responsibly or irresponsibly”, Davies said and pointed out that the current deadline only applies for those seeking an EB5 visa through regional centres while “the direct route is open forever”.
Both Joshi and Davies are of the opinion that Indian applicants should do more due diligence of the investments they make in the projects in the US. Joshi pointed out that the approval rate for Indian applicants was around 65 per cent as against the global approval rate of 82 per cent.
“My advice is that the applicants must have white money, the source of their funds,” Davies said. “They need to have good real estate finance lawyers.”
Both the experts also warned that Indian applicants are likely to enter the retrogression phase by 2019-20. In other words, the waiting period for the green card getting longer once the cap of 700 applicants for one country is hit.
Joshi’s advice is that applicants should take advantage of the expedited process approval whenever such an opportunity arises.
Requests to expedite applications are approved only in the case of national interest, humanitarian need, or emergency situations.
Joshi’s Nysa Capital holds the exclusive marketing rights in India for the Tryon International Equestrian Center, where this year’s FEI World Equestrian Games will be held.
The project has been given the status of that of national interest and expedite process approval under the EB5 visa scheme has been granted to it. It is a new economic cluster centred around the development of a world class equestrian lifestyle centre in North Carolina.
“One of the greatest advantages of investing in an expedited process approved project like Tryon is to get the Golden Visa in less than six months whereas the average process time is around 20-24 months,” Joshi said.
(Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
New York : In a speech bubbling with patriotism and economic policy of America First, President Donald Trump has reiterated the US’ commitment to strengthen its military, protect its borders and reset its trading relationships and appealed to a divided Congress for support.
“The era of economic surrender is over,” Trump declared in his first State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night in Washington and said, “We will work to fix bad trade deals and negotiate new ones.”
“We will protect American workers and American intellectual property, through strong enforcement of our trade rules,” he said.
Trump spoke for an hour and 20 minutes in the House chamber of Congress against the backdrop of a large American flag, with Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Paul Ryan seated behind him.
The Republicans and their supporters repeatedly cheered Trump, while the Democrats, who did not boycott the speech, sat stoically.
The speech, mostly devoted to domestic issues, was punctuated with spectacles for television with Trump calling out to crime victims, business people, beneficiaries of his economic programmes, soldiers, a crippled North Korean refugee and others seated in the audience with anecdotes about them as the cameras zoomed on them amid audience applause.
In a manouevre that mirrors the Congress Party in India, the Democratic Party brought out Representative Joe Kennedy, who is the grandson of the late Robert Kennedy and grandnephew of John F. Kennedy, to deliver the party’s response to Trump.
In outlining his strategic perspective, Trump lumped China and Russia with rogue regimes and terrorist groups that “challenge our interests, our economy, and our values”.
“In confronting these dangers, we know that weakness is the surest path to conflict, and unmatched power is the surest means of our defence,” Trump said, calling on the Congress to fully fund the military.
He included the nuclear arsenal in discussing his defence agenda.
“We must modernise and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression,” he said.
In fighting terrorism, Trump recalled his pledge “to extinguish IS from the face of the Earth” and said that the US and its allies have “liberated almost 100 per cent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria”.
To combat the Islamic State and the Al Qaeda, Trump asked Congress to ensure “we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists — wherever we chase them down”.
“Our warriors in Afghanistan also have new rules of engagement,” Trump said, repeating a dig at former President Barack Obama’s administration, saying, “Along with their heroic Afghan partners, our military is no longer undermined by artificial timelines, and we no longer tell our enemies our plans.”
Trump recalled the UN General Assembly resolution criticising Washington’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy there.
He used it to push another aspect of his America First policy, Trump asked the Congress to enact laws to ensure that “American foreign-assistance dollars always serve American interests, and only go to America’s friends”.
Iran and North Korea came in for special attention. He criticised the nuclear deal made by the US, the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany with Iran to end its nuclear proliferation and also accused it of destabilising the region.
“North Korea’s reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our homeland,” Trump acknowledged. “We are waging a campaign of maximum pressure to prevent that from happening.”
In another criticism of his predecessors, Trump said, “Past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation.
“I will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations that got us into this dangerous position.”
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
