EB-5 Updates

As many of you already know, the USCIS hosts a (somewhat) quarterly public conference call to discuss EB-5 related topics with the stakeholder community. And occasionally there will be a one-off call with the USCIS Director or the staff economists. These calls are open to all and a very, very valuable communication tool for people in the EB-5 community. (Often, these calls are recorded and parsed like tea leaves by EB-5 practitioners (similar to how the banking community would try [...]

For the longest time, the USCIS published I-526 processing times in its Quarterly Stakeholder presentation slides.  But the last time they mentioned something in writing was in June 2011 when the slides said that the Target Processing Times for I-526s were 5 months and Actual Times were 5.5 months. Since then, the delays have been getting longer and longer, and the USCIS seems to have […]

It was announced to the EB-5 community on Monday's call with the USCIS Director Mayorkas that the EB-5 team will be making a move from the current California Service Center to Washington, D.C. In the long run this is supposed to help the EB-5 team become more specialized, etc., but in the short run, this can only mean one thing: DELAYS. Rather, EVEN MORE delays. With I-526 adjudications taking something like 9 months on a good day, and with I-924 [...]

Today we have a guest post from a colleague on-the-ground in China. EB-5 REGULATION IN CHINA, By Steven Blayney, Esq* By some estimates, roughly 80% of EB-5 investors in the popular USCIS EB-5 regional center program are from China. Given the importance of Chinese investment to the EB-5 regional center program, it is crucial that U.S. EB-5 regional center principals marketing EB-5 investments in China understand the Chinese regulatory framework for administering EB-5 in China. […]

And, continued from the previous post about the Top Five EB-5 Originating Countries, here are the EB-5 visa numbers from FY2001 (188 visas) to FY2012 (7,641 visa). What a difference ten years makes! (Click on the chart to make it bigger.)The State Dept. numbers refer to people who are overseas and obtain their greencards through consular processing, while the USCIS numbers refer to people who are already in the United States on a non-immigrant visa (such as student visas or [...]

The IIUSA has compiled EB-5 Visa usage numbers released by the Department of State. (A bit of background. While the gatekeepers of the immigration process is the USCIS under the Department of Homeland Security, the actual visa issuances are under the purview of the Department of State. That is why visa numbers are issued by the DOS and not the USCIS for those of you who might be curious.) Here is a breakdown of the top five originating countries for [...]