Musings on EB-5 Processing Times
Everybody wants to know when their reserved category I-526 (or I-526e) will be adjudicated. I have heard anecdotal reports of some speedy adjudications in rural projects, but one can’t rely on that. USCIS does not yet report processing times for post-Reform and Integrity Act (RIA) I-526’s or & I-526e’s.
The data available for review is taken from IIUSA, which is the EB-5 trade group for professionals, like Regional Centers and lawyers, and from EB-5 Magazine, and from USCIS web pages, and may not be either accurate or consistent between those sources. So, I generalize by necessity.
The RIA was effective as of April 2022. IIUSA’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to USCIS reveal that, as of July 5, 2024, 240 High Unemployment Area (HUA) reserved category petitions had been approved. We also know that a total of only 4 post-RIA visas had actually been issued by the end of the fiscal year in October 2024. If we assume those visas corresponded to petitions approved prior to July 5, 2024, because they were among the first filed under the RIA, that means that the total time from filing to visa for the first few post-RIA HUA EB-5 filers was about 2 ½ years. We don’t have a similar count for investors proceeding via adjustment of status (I-485), but their isn’t that much difference time-wise in adjusting status vs. consular processing.
Does that mean a recently filed HUA petition will result in a visa or conditional green card in 2 ½ years? Not necessarily, but it’s a fair bet. Here are the factors than complicate the odds making:
1. On the side of speedier adjudication, the number of I-526 legacy petitions for non-China filers remaining in the queue is nearly exhausted, and there was a hiatus while the EB-5 Regional Center program was unfunded. That means the priority dates currently being adjudicated (June 2021) might accelerate rapidly through the calendar. As a matter of fact, we received an approval on a legacy pre-RIA case in mid-December 2024, for an I-526 filed right before the RC program expired in June 2021. Nothing was filed for 9-10 months after that, so a month’s worth of adjudications should bring us to May-June 2022 filings.
2. On the delay side, the HUA categories were lightly encumbered in the first few months of the post-RIA program while filers got accustomed to the new requirements and minimum investment limits. There have been 3,432 I-526e petitions submitted since then, as the program has geared back up to give the adjudicators more volume.
3. The wild card is the deportation push and civil-service employment changes promised by President-elect Trump. Nobody has any reliable information about whether those changes will siphon massive amounts of manpower and resources from the immigration agencies, or whether the ranks of adjudicators might be reduced.
I suspect that the considerations will balance out, and, to use USCIS’s own way of talking about it, 80% of I-526 direct and I-526e petitions filed today will be adjudicated within 2 years. The reserved category petitions might some preference, which I assume only because there already seems to be some preference as evidenced by the fact that 240 of them were approved before July 5, 2024, even though there were older legacy cases still in the system. So, while optimism is great, investors should plan on at least 2 years or so in limbo.
Whether visas will be available is an entirely different matter, and depends on where the petitioner is from. In its last Visa Bulletin, the Department of State warned that oversubscription of the reserved categories is coming soon. So, if you have a friend from a traditionally over-subscribed country (India, China and maybe Vietnam) in the US who is considering filing a concurrent I-526 or I-526e with an I-485 to change status, that option may not be available if they wait. They should file now!