As reported earlier this year, the August Visa Bulletin, published by the State Department stated that the limit of available visas in the unreserved EB-5 category had been reached. This was the first such announcement since the enactment of the 2022 EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act (RIA). RIA had allotted separate visa categories (under the TEA, Rural, and Infrastructure categories) allowing applicants from one of the backlogged countries (India or China) to claim an immediate visa. Applicants from the unreserved category (not TEA, rural, and infrastructure) would have to wait until the change of the fiscal year on October 1st for visa allotments to resume.
On October 25, 2024, USCIS responded to a letter from the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) providing an update on the work being prioritized since the EB-5 unreserved visa category limit was reached in August. Most notable is the dedication of resources towards processing I-485s with approved underlying I-526E petitions in the reserved category. This shows a clear effort to maximize the available visas left in this fiscal year. Given the rollover of unused reserved visas from past years to the unreserved category in FY 2024, this update comes as promising news and is attributed to the collaboration between the USCIS Immigrant Investor Program Office and USCIS Service Center Operations.
As time goes on, and these visa limits reset in the new fiscal year (with a change in administration), it will be interesting to see if USCIS maintains these efforts.
