(The comment deadline is 4 ET today.) Not applicable, since RCs not soliciting investment are not engaged in offers, purchases, or sales of securities, or in providing investment advice the activities subject to securities law compliance. I wouldnt exactly call it an engagement, since USCIS did not address many questions that we submitted in advance, and responded to the majority of in-person questions with thank you for your input and/or please send this question to the EB-5 Customer Service Mailbox (a notorious black hole). (When I redo the calculation using trailing 12-month completions in the denominator rather than just Q3 completions, then the result stays at 7 years for I-829 but increases to 13 years for I-526 and 6 years for I-485. News The latest news on the U.S. EB-5 Investment Visa . See question 16 (p. 7) of this June 2022 AILA/DOS Q&A for a process to follow if NVC has not received your approval notice and sent you a welcome letter after 60 days. ), USCIS has published Form I-956K, Registration for Direct and Third-Party Promoters. Are thousands of good faith investors about to start seeing their I-526 and I-829 denied and their residence status revoked through no fault of their own, and for no fault in the investment or job creation, but simply because their good faith regional center sponsor decided to go passive (instead of choosing to solicit new investment under the Integrity Act, with compliance steps specifically relevant to soliciting new investment)? Visa availability will be transparent and predictable. And according to Department of State interpretation, all EB-5 applicants with pre-March 2022 priority dates can only now qualify for a visa in the new 68% unreserved category, regardless of whether they invested in a TEA that matches new definitions. Petitioners have fought to become exceptions to the dreadful processing average by means of expedite requests and Mandamus litigation. The escape route offered in (M) is only theoretical, since USCIS permission is no guarantee that a good faith investor or NCE can in fact have an option to associate with another regional center. June 12, 2023 The I-956K instructions request that a promoter should submit Form I-956K before operating on behalf of any of the specified entities or promoting any offering under the EB-5 Regional Center Program. (See also the article Who are Promoters and What Requirements Apply to Them Under the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act? in the October 2022 Regional Center Business Journal, and the above-linked Federal Register invitation to submit I-956 comments to USCIS. Kevin Muck, think about todays prospective investor from China who is considering EB-5 investment with a rural project. Close. I will update this post if I learn of a chance to respond with questions and concerns. On March 15, 2022, the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA) became law as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 (Public Law No: 117-103). . If I were a prospective EB-5 immigrant willing to gamble today, I would consider trying to mitigate the risk by asking for escrow, with release of funds on I-526 approval or I-956F approval, and an exit option after a defined period in case of no action by/response from USCIS. The cap limits any one country to 7% of visas within that category until other countries demand under the 7% limit has been satisfied. (I also wonder if a difference between consular and USCIS capacity to issue visas at the end of the year could explain the unusually high number of Chinese regional center applicants who were able to adjust status in FY2022 more applicants than one would expect from priority date order.). On May 31, 2023, USCIS will start to send out Notices of Intent to Terminate to every regional center whose fee was not received on-time. Lets see our industry warriors, fresh from successful I-956 battles, take up the fight to salvage processing conditions for investor petitions. At that volume, it will take IPO about eight years to process the already-pending inventory of over 12,000 I-526 and over 11,000 I-829. Kevin Murk, Division Chief for Form I-526 Division. 6 Comments. I am working on an in-depth article discussing the rules EB-5-related content. 12 Comments. In this dream, investor petitions will be processed. Its supporters have long touted it as an important economic stimulus tool for economic . The bottom line is that EB-5 suffers from a supply problem. Based on processing trends and factors observable so far, I expect that a significant number of non-Chinese who filed I-526 in 2019-2022 will not have received a visa yet by October 2024 due to slow processing, and thus impacted by country cap removal. IIUSA published a new data report on the latest Form I-526 statistics, analyzing the trends of overall demand for EB-5, adjudication of I-526 cases, average approval rates, and the current I-526 . EB5 Latest News 2023 Visa Bulletin March 2023: Additional Delays for India, Progress in Chinese EB-5 Backlog. And the escape route offered in (M) is only theoretical, since USCIS permission is no guarantee that a good faith investor or NCE can in fact have a viable option to associate with another regional center. (F)(v) Parameters for Capital Redeployment. As a supervisor looking at these charts, I would question IPO management about its disordered process as well as about its low productivity. But even with the most optimistic assumptions on future visa availability, Chinese who filed I-526 from October 2016-March 2022 and Indians who filed I-526 from November 2019-March 2022 could face five or more years of waiting just for conditional permanent residence. Report of the Visa Office 2022 does segregate EB-5 visas into 5th Unreserved and 5th Set-Aside categories, reflecting changes to visa availability made by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act enacted March 15, 2022. The parties are still discussing how DHS should handle pre-existing regional centers and their existing and new investors under the new rules. In theory, country caps further restrict availability within each category. June 17, 2022 (I wish that policy could be litigated on behalf of the over 18,000 EB-5 visas lost during the expiration.) China ended the year with only 199 direct EB-5 visas issued not much higher than usual, and not explaining the unexpected thousands of Chinese who adjusted status in 2022. And the new EB-5 law encourages special priority for new I-526 associated with rural projects. Hiring in 2022/2023 shows that IPO is pursuing plans to increase the number of adjudicators, improve records management, explore process efficiencies, formulate new policies and procedures, respond to more inquiries, and address regional center compliance. Heres a gauntlet. Dividing Pending at period end by Total completed for each form, we can derive a processing time estimate that will apply to a petition at the end of each queue if USCIS continues the same productivity it achieved in Q3. Witness how conditions have deteriorated since 2018, back when we thought two-year I-526 processing times were long. Form I-526 does not ask each petitioner to provide and depend on lawful source of funds documentation for every other investor in the NCE. I depend on you to talk USCIS out of its practice of concealing I-526/I-526E filing information. Escrow protection will be possible. Significant room for improvement remains, as illustrated in the long-term trend charts provided below. EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act implementation does not dominate recent IPO job postings. The purpose of the form is to register with USCIS as a direct or third-party promoter and to allow DHS to perform standard background checks with law enforcement agencies. The form is exciting due to its ambiguities (with vague terms pointed out in the draft I-956K still undefined), and the dramatic consequences of getting it wrong. I saw this update on Christmas Eve and thought about leaving the nieces and nephews to report on it, but why? The large number of denials reflects attitudes at the Investor Program Office, particularly toward direct EB-5 cases, and particularly since the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act protected USCIS from judicial review of unjust EB-5 decisions. Are expedite approvals and mandamus actions having a significant impact? So long as country cap victims are suffering in decade and multi-decade long queues, country cap beneficiaries cannot expect to rest easy in an unchallenged status quo. USCIS should want to empower prospective EB-5 users to judge upfront whether and when EB-5 could offer an opportunity to immigrate. Currently, the Form I-526 does not request any non-petitioner source of funds evidence. And heres the Settlement Agreement. During the first part of the engagement, USCIS will discuss three specific areas within the Immigrant Investor Program. But USCIS has directed adjudicators to request it at the RFE stage, and to deny direct I-526 for lack of source-of-funds documentation for non-EB-5 investors. Home > News. The remaining 2,706 unused EB-5 visas in FY2022 were permanently lost to EB-5. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) invites you to participate in a stakeholder engagement on Monday, March 20, 2023, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Eastern. Its always possible that the current Check Case Processing Times page isnt the way it is out of malice. Regional centers that do not wish to solicit investments for new projects under RIA may and should still wish to retain their designation, for the sake of protecting their pre-RIA investors. But overall, processing is evidently not first-in-first out. I considered writing an article about the October 2022 Visa Bulletin, discussing what it means for demand to materialize, as the visa bulletin notes like to say. My document lists all open positions during the past year, with duties and qualifications for each, and links to the original job postings (as saved in my files, since most are no longer live at USAjobs.gov). Apparently applicable to all NCEs and JCEs still in the job-creating stage. The government doesnt report this valuable intel directly, but I can guess by looking at data for I-526 filings by country and by year, and thinking about where those petitioners must be today based on what I know about petition processing, visa issuance, and the visa bulletin to date. The I-956K instructions warn that if USCIS finds problems with I-956K, penalties can include criminal prosecution for the aspiring promoter plus denial of applications and petitions associated with the regional center, NCE, or JCE associated with that promoter. OR click here to request a quote or send us a message. As I write business plans to be reviewed by adjudication officers, it helps to know the officers qualifications, job description, and organizational context. Which historically means that only China, India, Vietnam, Mexico, Philippines and Dominican Republic are in the country cap danger zone overall, and the last two can safely be disregarded for this report since theyve never been remotely significant in EB-5. 5 Comments, On October 7, the USCIS Policy Manual was updated with revisions to some of the policy affected by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act. FY2022 Q3 Performance Data Report Excerpt. In keeping with its recent trend of slower processing for EB-5 petitions, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has moved back the cut off date for Indian investors by 17 months in the March 2023 Visa Bulletin. It certainly has been a very active few days in the EB-5 industry, especially with the recent news of the amount of investment resetting to $500,000 immediately and today's activity in the U.S. Senate, which almost assures that the EB-5 Regional Center Program . (M) stipulates that I-526 petitions will be denied and even conditional permanent residence status terminated upon regional center termination. Input will be provided in accordance with existing channels of communication and in compliance with Section 107 of the RIA. See the base of this page for links to accepted channels of communication for submitting feedback. Who needs to care if a protracted EB-5 process increases the time to hold EB-5 funds under management and defers government oversight? EB-5 Update - Investment Decreases to $500,000 - EB-5 Regional Center Program. Visas issued in 2022 reduced those queues by 6,125 visas to China, 1,381 visas to India, and 815 visas to Vietnam. I hope that in the future, we will increasingly see IPO employees and job duties involved with adjudication. Well make sure to get a FAQ out for the public very soon. Im sure that many advance questions addressed this hot topic, so USCIS shouldve been ready for it. . Every month, USCIS announces whether applicants already living in the United States should file their "adjustment of status" applications based on the "Final Action Dates" or the "Dates for Filing." Citizenship and Immigration Services: Actions Needed to Address Pending Caseload by the Government Accountability Office (August 18, 2021). ), IPO will have a wealth of recommendations for operating procedures.
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