The passage of the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act (RIA) in 2022 resulted in the most significant changes to the EB-5 investor immigrant visa program since its establishment in 1990. Among the most notable changes implemented through the RIA was the creation of new “set aside” visa categories for EB-5 investors. These set-aside categories allocate
The U.S. Department of State (DOS) has released the monthly Visa Bulletin for October 2022 — the first month of Fiscal Year 2023. A review of the Visa Bulletin shows that the Employment Based 5th (EB-5) visa category for nationals of Mainland China has retrogressed, with cutoff date moving from Dec. 22, 2015 to March
EB-5 investors achieved a victory in their continuous efforts against lengthy USCIS processing times for I-526 petitions in Gutta v. Renaud. This lawsuit establishes precedent for EB-5 mandamus cases with the decision that unreasonably long processing times were in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Almost two dozen EB-5 investors coming from a
Currently, the average processing time for an I-526 petition ranges from 20.5 to 27 months, as shown in the screenshot from USCIS website below. For cases filed with an receipt date of January 29, 2017 or earlier that remain pending with USCIS, the investors or the attorneys of record can submit an “outside normal processing
On July 14, 2016, USCIS released updated processing times for the Immigrant Investor Program Office (IPO).
The updated processing times are as follow: