EB-5 Updates

I-526 Processing Status

Under the threat of a potential law change that would re-organize the EB-5 visa wait line, people who currently face no visa wait are especially eager to know when they can receive I-526 approval and get visa applications filed. My timing consultation analysis calculates where IPO should be with I-526 processing for given dates on average, considering the composition and movement of the entire queue, official and unofficial guidelines for I-526 processing order, and anecdotal evidence. But a couple other sources also indicate which petitions are getting touched right now: the USCIS Case Processing Times page and the USCIS Check Case Status tool.

The USCIS Case Processing Times Report for Form I-526 currently gives an “estimated time range” starting at 27.5 months for countries with visas available. According to the claimed methodology, that report means that 50% of I-526 decisions in October 2020 were on cases less than 27.5 months old – i.e. filed more recently than June 2018.

The USCIS Case Status Online tool gives more current and specific information. A petitioner can enter his I-526 receipt number on this page to get a current status report for his individual case. Nothing practically prevents the petitioner or his app from also entering groups of receipt numbers, to see what’s happening with other petitions filed at around the same time. I don’t use this method myself but think it’s fair game for investors to do so, and several of my blog readers have shared the results of their investigations.  The Case Status check method indicates that a large percentage of I-526 filed up through August 2018 have been assigned for adjudication and already seen action (at least an RFE), and that September 2018 I-526 are now being worked on. For example, see this analysis published by blog commenter Web. And thank you to others who have also shared their work with me.

With this in mind, if you filed I-526 before August 2018 and have heard nothing yet, you might talk to your lawyer about starting to pursue the available inquiry channels to make sure that your I-526 did not fall through the cracks. (The huge deviation in processing times shows that IPO in fact has all kinds of reasons for processing I-526 out of date order, but at least you know that you are out of order and can inquire accordingly.) If you filed I-526 in September 2018 or soon after, then you can look at I-526 filing trends to guess how much longer you may have to wait, considering the most recently reported processing speed (average 300 decisions per month) and that China I-526 from 2018 are not currently being assigned. (If much later, then one also needs to factor in the assumption that processing speed will probably change in the future.) Here’s a clip of data that I’ve collected from a variety of sources on distribution of I-526 receipts in late 2018.

Interpreting November 2020 EB-5 Visa Availability Predictions from Charles Oppenheim

On November 19, 2020, IIUSA held a webinar about EB-5 visa availability with Charles Oppenheim. Chief of the Visa Control & Reporting Division at the U.S. Department of State.

Those who missed this information-rich presentation can purchase the recording here. IIUSA rightly makes Oppenheim’s slides available for free to the public.

The detail from Oppenheim’s visa availability presentation is particularly relevant for EB-5 investors from mainland China, Vietnam, India, and potentially South Korea. The rest of the world, you can skip this difficult post, except the first two questions (no news on consulates resuming normal operations, but good news for Hong Kong status).

My post organizes information from Oppenheim’s presentation around key questions, and interprets data from the slides with reference to Oppenheim’s explanations from the  presentation, as well as information that I’ve gathered from other sources or read between the lines.  (I apologize for the delay in this post.  It was not easy to write, and I’ve also been spending time trying to earn some money with my business-plan-writing day job. If you’d like to help sponsor me and create compensation for this blog work, here’s a PayPal contribution link. I much appreciate the few readers who have stepped up in support. Meanwhile, I have other belated posts/comments coming soon to share more information about I-526 processing developments and discuss promising implications of changes in Washington.)

Are EB-5 applicants from Hong Kong now considered in the same category as Mainland China?

Oppenheim answer: “No. At this time Hong Kong is still at this point treated as a separate foreign state, for IV purposes, going forward.”  (Clip from the recording.) This is great news for Hong Kong EB-5 applicants. Thank you Department of State for resisting chaos and holding firm to the law.

When will consular processing resume for EB-5 visa applicants?

Oppenheim still has “no idea” when consulates will return to normal processing status. With consular operations in question, Oppenheim currently estimates that EB-5 visas actually issued in Fiscal Year 2021 will be below the number theoretically available. (His estimates account for the fact that a quarter of FY2021 has already been lost for visa issuance abroad.) On the bright side, any family-based visas that likewise can’t be issued this year will increase the EB-5 quota again next year, providing some compensation/another chance to reduce the EB-5 backlog.

What’s the latest news about visa numbers issued and available?

• Of the 11,112 EB-5 visa quota for FY2020, Department of State actually issued only 3,602 visas. (Thanks to consulates having been mostly non-operational since March 2020.)
• The EB-5 visa quota is 18,600 for FY2021, of which about 11,300 could potentially go to China (7% per-country quota of 1,302 visas plus the at least 10,000 visas likely leftover from the rest of the world). However, consulates are still not issuing visas, so actual visa issuance will again fall below the available limit. Oppenheim mentioned an in informal guess that it might be possible to actually issue about 3,000 visas to China and 600 to Vietnam in FY2021.
• The EB-5 visa quota for FY2022 may be at least 14,200, based on Oppenheim’s informal estimate that the EB category may be 200,000 in FY2022 due to another roll-over of family-based visa numbers.

Is the government willing or able to issue more EB-5 visas through adjustment of status, to compensate for ongoing limits on consular processing?

Oppenheim stated that the visa bulletin might be moved in FY2021 to accommodate adjustment of status for EB-5 applicants in the U.S., if consular processing abroad remains limited. That sounds promising. However, the numbers suggest that this did not happen in FY2020.

Per Oppenheim’s presentation, only 1,117 EB-5 visas were issued in FY2020 through adjustment of status – even fewer than in a normal year. (According to Annual Reports of the Visa Office 1,589 EB-5 visas were issued through adjustment of status in 2019, and 1,289 in 2018.) Adjustment of status in FY2020 was not limited by the EB-5 visa quota (since only 32% of available EB-5 visas were actually issued in the year), or by low demand (Oppenheim mentioned there are about 2,500 I-485 pending at USCIS for China-born applicants).  Therefore, I guess there must have been a choice to not move the visa bulletin in FY2020 in a way that would let AOS applicants advance ahead of consular processing applicants. Alternatively, USCIS slowness blocked the path.

The China queue particularly suffered in 2020 with respect to status adjustment. The number of visas issued through status adjustment for China-born applicants in FY2020 was nearly identical to the numbers from 2019 and 2018 (489, 433, 481). China ended FY2020 with over 3,700 fewer issued visas than expected, despite apparently having 2,500 applicants ready to go through adjustment of status. I wonder how many fewer visas might have been lost for China, if Department of State had only moved China’s final action date more in FY2020 to maximize adjustment of status? Oppenheim informally estimated that it might be practically possible to issue 3,000 EB-5 visas to Chinese and 600 EB-5 visas to Vietnamese in FY2021, despite there technically being about 11,300 EB-5 visas available to China and 1,300 to Vietnam, this year. His pessimistic estimate must mean limited expectations for adjustment of status as well as consular processing in FY2021. But maybe the incoming administration will clear politically-motivated roadblocks from the immigration path more quickly than we expect.

What movement can we expect from the Visa Bulletin in FY2021?

• China: Oppenheim does not foresee advancing Chart B for China for the “foreseeable future” because, he said, almost 8,000 China-born applicants are already ready to go at the 12/15/2015 Chart B date. (If Oppenheim is right to guess that consulates/DOS can only practically manage to issue about 3,000 visas to China this year, and about 3,500 to 4,000 next year, then Chart B would not have to move for China until late next year. The picture would be different if consulates/DOS were able to actually issue the approximately 11,300 EB-5 visas that are technically available to China this year. It would also be different if the Visa Bulletin moved just to maximize adjustment of status for China while consulates remain nearly non-operational.)
• Vietnam: Oppenheim reports that about 475 applications are ready to go for Vietnam based on the December 2020 visa bulletin movement. That’s enough to go on for awhile, considering that the consulate in Vietnam is still only conducting handfuls of interviews, and that Vietnam apparently has very few EB-5 applicants using adjustment of status. (Combining Oppenheim’s numbers for total visa issuance with consular reports that I tracked in FY2020, it appears that only 8 Vietnamese got EB-5 visas through adjustment of status in the U.S. in FY2020.) But if Oppenheim is right that it will be practically possible to issue at least 600 of the 1,302 visas technically available to Vietnam this year, then the Visa Bulletin will have to move again for Vietnam later this year so that more than 475 applicants can get visas.
• India: It appears that Oppenheim expects India to say current in the Visa Bulletin throughout FY2021. He did not say this, but he left India off of the slide listing countries “at limit” in FY2021 (“Otherwise Unused EB-5 Numbers FY 2021 (Estimated)”).  And I’m not surprised, since apparently about 87% of the India backlog is still stuck at the I-526 stage, where it’s practically unable to trigger the visa limit and visa bulletin. So long as the number of Indians who manage to reach the visa stage remains far below 1,300 (the number of visas technically available to India this year), India will not need visa bulletin limits this year. As of October 1, 2020, there were 799 Indians with applications on file at NVC. Oppenheim did not report how many Indians have pending I-485 in the U.S. but I gather that this number is rather off his radar. It doesn’t appear in his wait time calculation for India. (Combining Oppenheim’s numbers for total visa issuance in FY2020 with monthly consular reports that I tracked in FY2020, it appears that 301 Indians got EB-5 visas through AOS in FY2020 – about 50% of the India total. That’s relatively significant, and means maybe Oppenheim should be paying more attention to India demand through adjustment of status. On the other hand, maybe Oppenheim just reasonably assumes that USCIS will be too slow to advance another 500 Indian applicants to the visa stage in time to push India over the FY2021 visa limit.) If Oppenheim does not expect India to reach the visa limit this year, that’s mixed news. A current visa bulletin will be good for Indians near the front of the line — those who manage to get past I-526 approval this year — since they can proceed unhindered to file visa applications and potentially get final action. On the other hand, it’s bad news for Indians currently nearer the back of the line, because it means that the visa line ahead is moving slowly, and will be reduced this year by much less than the 1,300 applicants who would have exited the line if India were able to reach its visa limit this year.
• Other countries: No other countries are expected to reach visa limits this year.

How can I interpret the EB-5 visa wait time estimate?

Visa wait time estimates use a simple formula: A/B=C, where A is estimated number of people currently in line for a visa, and B is estimated average number of visas available per year.

This calculation appears on the following two slides that we eagerly await in each presentation. The orange column in the first slide is variable A, the blue bars in the second slide represent result C, and Oppenheim’s assumption about variable B can be inferred from A/C. I’ve put a table below the slides clarifying how the calculation works.

Interpretation of the slide “EB-5 Applicants with Petitions on file at NVC and Estimated USCIS Applicant Data as of 10/1/2020“

A few points to note:

• Years to Visa Availability: The wait time estimate refers to years from the date of I-526 filing to the date of having a visa available for conditional permanent residence. The wait time estimate is a function of how many total people are in the process, regardless of where they are in the process or how long or short I-526 processing times or other processing may be. For example, 1.8 years for Brazil just means that there are enough Brazilians in the system today to claim 1.8 years of available visas. The actual visa wait time for a Brazilian filing today will likely be longer simply due to the separate factor of I-526 processing times, which have been longer than 1.8 years. For countries facing long visa availability waits regardless, I-526 processing times occur concurrently with, not consecutive to, the visa availability wait. (Though I-526 processing time can affect the visa availability wait if USCIS approves petitions out of date order.)
• Applicability: Oppenheim’s table makes a timing prediction specifically applicable to a single point in time: Estimated years to visa availability for a petition filed “today” October 1, 2020. Remember, this is a queue problem. At any given moment, the remaining wait time for each person standing in a long queue is different depending on how close or far that person is from the front of the queue. There’s no such thing as “a wait time for Vietnam,” but only “a wait time for someone from Vietnam who entered the queue at a certain time.”  Oppenheim’s wait time estimate specifically applies to the very back of the queue. If you’ve already been in the queue for awhile, then your estimated wait time will be shorter than whatever’s estimated for your country in Oppenheim’s calculation for today. (We can estimate how much shorter by switching out the data in columns i and ii in the above table, replacing it with the subset of applicants who have earlier I-526 filing dates than yours.)
• Vietnam: The calculation reveals a typo on the bar chart slide. Vietnam should be 7.9 years, not 7 (consistent with the height of the bar and the assumption that Vietnam’s average visa availability assumption is the same as every other country: 700, not 800). 5,499/700=7.9, not 7.
• South Korea: I note a jump in the number of future South Korean applicants in the I-526 stage. The estimated wait to visa availability for a South Korean filing today (3.8 years) is now long enough to potentially exceed I-526 processing times. If USCIS takes less than 3 years to advance all those South Koreans to the visa stage, then someone filing I-526 today from South Korea might find himself in a South Korean crowd at the visa stage, with the Visa Bulletin then providing crowd control with final action dates. This concern does not apply to Brazil and Taiwan, where estimated visa availability waits remain well below processing times.
• China: The most controversial assumption in Oppenheim’s calculation is annual visa availability for China. Oppenheim explained that the current estimates assume about 3,000 visas for China in FY2021 and 3,500 to 4,000 visas in future years. (Thus the average 3,300 in the calculation – higher than the 3,000 used in his last wait time calculation from October 2019.) However, Oppenheim granted that China could well reach more like 7,500 visas per year — considering low incoming rest-of-the-world demand, and that country caps limit India and Vietnam to only about 700 visas each per year for the next 7-8 years. If the China wait line estimated at 56,961 could proceed at a future speed closer to 7,000/year than 3,000 per year, then the estimated time of arrival for someone now at the end of the China line could fall to almost half of the current estimate.
• Assumption about future visa applicants to result from pending I-526: The green column — DOS estimated # applicants with petition on file at USCIS –is calculated by multiplying the number of I-526 pending at USCIS by assumptions about I-526 denial rates and family size. I have reverse engineered this calculation, based on Oppenheim’s hints about his assumptions (including from a slide in the presentation that gives “average percentage of EB-5 principal investors” – meaning of all EB-5 visas issued, how many were issued to principals rather than family). I won’t add that detail to this already overlong post, but pause to note that these assumptions are also open to rethinking. The I-526-to-future-visa-applicant multiplier that Oppenheim uses for his calculation is based on historical experience, and does not look forward to future differences from potentially increased age-outs, attrition, and denial rates.
• Applicants not counted: It’s important to remember that in real life, the blue and green column in Oppenheim’s table are less than the total inventory of future EB-5 applicants. Oppenheim’s table counts inventory in two places: pending I-526 at USCIS, and documentarily qualified applicants pending at the National Visa Center. Future EB-5 applicants also exist in these other places not counted in Oppenheim’s Estimated Total: applicants on pending I-485 at USCIS, and people with I-526 approval but not yet on file at NVC due to delays in getting/submitting documents or to the fact that Visa Bulletin Chart B prevents them from filing yet. I guess Oppenheim leaves these categories out of the calculation because pending I-485 numbers were historically small and it’s hard to count people associated with I-526 approvals who aren’t yet on file at the visa stage. But these missing categories are significant at least for India, which has a lot of people doing status adjustment in the U.S. (50%, in FY2022), and China (as evidenced by the fact that the number of Chinese applicants at NVC increased by almost 10,000 between October 2019 and October 2020—an increase that must have come out of that uncounted twilight zone between I-526 approval and visa stage, since it it’s not reflected in I-526 inventory change between October 2019 and October 2020.)

Does Charles Oppenheim overestimate or underestimate actual EB-5 wait times?

Let’s go back to our equation, A/B=C, where A is estimated number of people currently in line for a visa, and B is estimated average number of visas available per year. Oppenheim overestimates or underestimates wait time C depending on the accuracy of A and B, which contain assumptions about what will happen in the future.

As discussed above, Oppenheim’s calculation of A can be challenged by questioning his assumptions about future family size and attrition rate (which would make his A calculation err high), and/or by pointing out the missing categories of future applicants (which would make his A calculation err low). B could be an underestimate if future visa availability is greater (which will almost certainly be true for China, considering low rest-of-the-world demand, and could be true for everyone if visa reforms get enacted).

So, it’s complicated. I dream of hosting a webinar with a spreadsheet that lays out the variables and formulas, and we can play what-if games together with the numbers. What happens to the wait time estimate result if I plug in an assumed average I-526 denial rate of 70% instead of 80%? What happens if I add a  guessed 10% attrition rate at the visa stage? What if I guess 10% of children per year aging out? What if I delete the family size variable from the equation entirely in case the law changes to only count investors? What if I start from I-526 filing numbers to try to quantify those uncounted categories of people who have I-526 approval but not on file at the National Visa Center? How does the calculation change if instead of picking one average number for visa availability, I look at visa availability year-by-year into the future based on what I know about how the current backlog will spread out over time?  If I need my wait time to be a maximum five years, say, what combination/quantity of changes could yield that estimated result? (And how plausible do those changes look?)

Indeed, I have prepared visa timing scenario analysis, if I can manage to wrap it up in a sellable package. The alternative to such a complicated exercise over Excel is to think wishfully “Well since the wait time is complicated and questionable maybe the wait time is actually short, at least as short as I need it to be.” I’ve heard that sentence spoken in almost those words, again and again. But people with lives/business/investment dependent on actual EB-5 timing – project companies or investors – need a better sense of the probabilities. If you’ve read patiently to the end of this long and difficult post, I count you in this vigilant group, and will try to be available for additional assistance.

By the way, you can visit my Data Room page to find links to Oppenheim presentations from previous years. Or if you’d like to book a consultation with me, I will curate data for you relevant to your specific questions and concerns. I dare say that I have my fingers on every piece of quantitative information that has been published for EB-5 in the last 10 years, and most of what’s available from the past 27 years.

FY2020 Q3 Processing Data

USCIS has finally published form processing data for FY2020 Q3 (April to June 2020) on the USCIS Immigration and Citizenship Data Page. As with last quarter, EB-5 form data is now only presented in the All Forms report, to make it maximally difficult to find and read. Here is the summary, followed by charts to put the data in context of historical trends.

EB-5 Petition Processing Data for FY2020 Q3 (April to June 2020)

Notes on the charts:

1. The I-526 trend chart suggests a possible method in IPO’s madness. Maybe their goal is to reduce approvals to equal denials. As discussed in the previous post, the volume of I-526 adjudications has been extremely low overall under Sarah Kendall’s watch. But the data shows that IPO has been denying as many I-526 as ever – it’s just approvals that have fallen. And perhaps not coincidentally, approvals track denials over the last five quarters.
2. I-526 receipts remained extremely low into Q3. And who is surprised? When USCIS proposed raising the EB-5 investment amount, they projected that the major price increase would result in raising more money. I tried to explain the Law of Demand in my comments, and was ignored. And now we see: doubling the minimum EB-5 investment amount resulted in raising 45 times less investment per quarter in FY2020 than the average for 2013 to 2019. Policy-makers, is this what you want? Recent IPO behavior, the pandemic, and visa oversubscription also share blame for decimated demand. If the United States actually wants billions of dollars in EB-5 investment, not to mention the 10+ new jobs required to come with each investment, EB-5 program policy reforms are needed.
3. I-829 receipts and adjudication volume do not show particular upward or downward trends.  The I-829 approval rate remains high. Volume of adjudications makes clear that IPO has reallocated resources away from I-526 to I-829.
4. If IPO continued to process pending petitions at the rate evidenced in Q3, then they will take 4.3 years just to process all currently-pending I-526 and 3.5 years to process currently-pending I-829. Those rates would be over 7 times slower than Congress intends. I trust productivity will be improved, and future processing times will not actually be that long.
5. If IPO continues to approve I-526 at the rate shown in FY2020 Q1-Q3, it will only approve about 2,200 I-526 per year – far below the level needed to use the typical 10,000 annual EB-5 visa quota. This is what building The Wall through legal immigration looks like, and needs to change.
6. In 2020, form receipts at IPO were five times below the average since 2016. That means five times less fee revenue. And USCIS wonders why it has budget problems. (One of the many questions Sarah Kendall did not answer last week was my question about how IPO would maintain integrity in adjudications, in light of reduced fee revenue due to reduced volume of receipts.)
7. The Q3 report clarifies that the I-924 row combines regional center terminations and reaffirmations with I-924 application filings. Since such a combination is meaningless, I am no longer reporting I-924 data points.

For all the in-process investors reading this and thinking “what does this mean for me,” here’s how to think about the question. Take the number of pending forms just reported in your category, divide that by the number of approvals plus denials just reported for your form type, and the result is the number of quarters it would take to process every petition in the inventory, assuming first-in-first-out order and that future processing volume doesn’t increase or decrease. This number probably gives a ballpark estimate for the very longest your petition could take, assuming that processing is more likely to, in fact, get better than worse from here, that you’re not at the very end of the line, and that exceptions to FIFO order will benefit rather than delay your petition. (If you’re from China or a very recent investor from India and Vietnam, the picture gets more complicated for I-526.) In my I-526 timing consultation, I try to drill down further to quantify exactly where you are in the queue and how queue movement will affect you, considering the impact of filing surges, the distribution of I-526 filings by country, the visa availability approach impact, political factors, and what I see anecdotally vs what’s reported about I-526 processing. But it’s complicated by limited data and the number of exceptions to FIFO. May USCIS one day get staff and leadership who believe in order and transparency, so that simple questions about process timing can get the simple answers they deserve.

EB-5 Visa Availability in FY2021

October 2020 begins the government’s new fiscal year, which means a new set of annual visas available.

The October 2020 Visa Bulletin announces that that the annual limit for Employment-Based (EB) visas – normally 140,000 – will be approximately 261,500 for FY2021.

The quota for EB-5 (employment-based fifth preference) is 7.1% of total EB visas by law. So the EB-5 quota — which is approximately 140,000*0.071=9,940 in a normal year – will be approximately 261,500*0.071=18,567 for FY2021.

The country cap also shares visas on a percent basis – 7.0% to each country. So each country limited by the country cap can expect at least 18,567*0.07=1,300 EB-5 visas available in FY2021. China, the country with oldest EB-5 applicants, will theoretically get what’s left of 18,567 after deducting 2,600 visas for India plus Vietnam and however many rest-of-the world applicants can get I-526 approval and visa processing in time to claim visas (historically, under 4,000 visas).

What does this mean?

First, note that the extra employment-based visas available in FY2021 represent family-based visas that went unused in FY2020.  261,500 – 140,000 = 121,500, so we now know that 121,500 FB visas available in FY2020 were not issued, thanks to the combined effect of anti-immigration executive orders and consular closures. FB’s loss is EB’s gain. (I previously wrote a guest article explaining how the visa allocation process works, and anticipating the extra visas.)

[10/1/2020 UPDATE: Note that the updated version of the Heroes Act (coronavirus relief bill) passed in the House on 10/1 includes language in Division T Title I (PDF p. 2023-2024) that would change the allocation of unused visas for FY2021 and FY2022, returning family-based visas to the family-based category. This Democrat-centric bill currently has no chance to progress further. But if the language in the House bill did become law, then EB-5 would go back to expecting no more than 9,940 visas available in FY2021 and FY2022, instead of benefiting from unused family-based visas.]

What extra FY2021 visa availability means in practice for EB-5 will depend on whether and where available visas can be issued. Keep in mind these three constraints on the visa process:

1. The number of visas available to EB-5. (This year will have almost twice as many as usual)
2. How many visas the consulates can issue. (Still unknown when consulates will resume normal operations. A number of consulates – for example in nearly-virus-free Vietnam – have never had much pandemic excuse to close, and yet still at minimal operations, judging by monthly reports. The consular processing forecast going forward appears to depend on political as well as pandemic trends.)
3. How many visas can be issued through adjustment of status. (This depends on how many EB-5 investors are in the U.S., how efficiently IPO can approve I-526 for those investors, and how efficiently USCIS can process I-485.)

The overall best case scenario is that consulates and USCIS will both go back to doing their jobs, and over 18,500 EB-5 visas will actually get issued in FY2021, equably to the oldest applicants both abroad in the U.S. That could shave almost one year off the expected visa wait times for Vietnamese and Indian investors, and deduct several years from the expected China wait time. (This benefit will be countered by however many expected FY2020 visas were lost due to consulate closures: we don’t know this number yet.)

Alternatively, if consular processing remains stuck while USCIS works efficiently in FY2021, then the few Vietnamese, Indian, and even Chinese EB-5 applicants able to use I-485 in the U.S. may skip their entire expected visa waits and get visas this year. Meanwhile, their compatriots abroad would face future wait times lengthened by the number of visas issued out-of-chronological order in the U.S. (and concurrently shortened by the number of visas issued above the average quota, if any).

Alternatively, if consular processing remains stuck and also USCIS continues operating at low volume, both for I-526 and I-485, then FY2021 may end with many of the technically-available EB-5 visas not having been issued to anyone. In that case, the unused EB-5 visas would be lost to EB-1 (as happened to any available EB-5 visas not issued in FY2020). In that case, EB-5 wait times (calculated based on the expectation of about 10,000 visas issued annually) would be lengthened across the board according to how far FY2020 and FY2021 fell below the expected average visas issued.

The Visa Bulletin is Department of State’s lever to channel visa demand. DOS knows more than we do about plans for consular operations, USCIS operations, and the number of people with pending I-526, pending I-485, and pending visa applications. So I try to read between the lines of the visa bulletin to understand what they know about constraints going forward.

Quoted from the October 2020 Visa Bulletin

E. MOVEMENT OF THE OCTOBER FINAL ACTION AND APPLICATION FILING DATES

Employment-based:  All of the Final Action and Application Filing Dates have been advanced at a very rapid pace, in anticipation of the FY 2021 annual limit being approximately 261,500, an all-time high.  The movement of these dates has been taken in consultation with USCIS Office of Policy and Strategy to accommodate processing plans for USCIS Offices during the coming fiscal year and to maximize number use within the FY 2021 annual limits.  Pending demand, in the form of applications for adjustment of status, and documentarily qualified immigrant visa applicants, is well below the estimated annual limit of 261,500.  Adjustment of status applications filed early in FY 2021 are most likely to be adjudicated during the upcoming fiscal year. [UPDATE: at about noon on 9/24, this last sentence was deleted from the visa bulletin.]

F. VISA AVAILABILITY IN THE COMING MONTHS

EMPLOYMENT-based categories (potential monthly movement)

Employment Fifth:  The category will remain “Current” for most countries

China:       No forward movement
Vietnam:   Limited forward movement

The above final action date projections for the Family and Employment categories indicate what is likely to happen on a monthly basis through January.   The determination of the actual monthly final action dates is subject to fluctuations in applicant demand and a number of other variables.

“All of the Final Action and Application Filing Dates have been advanced at a very rapid pace” in anticipation of a record-high visa limit, says the Visa Bulletin Section E. Only that statement is not true for the EB-5 category. The October 2020 Visa Bulletin has exactly the same Final Action and Application Filing dates for EB-5 as the September 2020 visa bulletin (except for the note about visa unavailability in case the regional center program is not reauthorized). The visa bulletin further predicts little to no forward movement for the China and Vietnam EB-5 dates at least through January.

With so many more visas available to EB-5, why isn’t the visa bulletin moving EB-5 dates? One factor is this statement in Visa Bulletin Section E: “The movement of these dates has been taken in consultation with USCIS Office of Policy and Strategy to accommodate processing plans for USCIS Offices during the coming fiscal year and to maximize number use within the FY 2021 annual limits.” Normally, visa bulletin date movement is just to maximize number use within numerical limits. It’s interesting that the visa bulletin admits a (presumably conflicting) second factor: “to accommodate processing plans for USCIS Offices.” DOS realizes that EB-5 visa issuance will be constrained by how efficient USCIS is planning to be this year. (Also, intriguing that the visa bulletin does not mention consultation with consulates about their also-relevant processing plans.)

Another factor in future visa bulletin movement: past visa bulletin movement. DOS already advanced the EB-5 Final Action and Application Filing dates very significantly in FY2020 to try to maximize visa usage under the consular processing constraint. The dates jumped in 2020 to August 2015 for China and August 2017 for Vietnam, which released a significant amount of visa demand. But then consulates all-but-stopped issuing visas, so that demand released by past visa movement is probably largely still waiting now for final action. Assuming consulates get back on track in FY2021, they may have enough EB-5 demand already to keep them busy for awhile due to constraints in 2020. Also, the fact that USCIS will now allow I-485 to be filed based on Chart B in October 2020 (while it had used Chart A since April 2020) opens up some additional visa demand for the new year. The EB-5 visa bulletin dates will only have to really jump forward for EB-5 if consular processing remains blocked indefinitely by the pandemic/politics, and the visa bulletin effectively just becomes a lever for adjustment of status demand.

This sentence from the visa bulletin Section E is also significant: “Adjustment of status applications filed early in FY 2021 are most likely to be adjudicated during the upcoming fiscal year.” [UPDATE: And even more significant: the visa bulletin was revised about seven hours after posting to delete this sentence.] The sentence suggests that DOS anticipates a good year of EB-5 visa availability for adjustment of status. Besides the increased visa quota, this could reflect predictions about limited visa demand from consular processing and/or limited volume of AOS applicants possible in light of I-526 circumstances. [The fact that the sentence was subsequently deleted suggests that USCIS called DOS to complain about representations regarding likely adjudication performance.]

For investors born in Mainland China (and people advising Chinese investors and planning redeployment), I do have a new visa timing analysis ready for China. It’s customized by quarter based on I-526 receipt data, and models scenarios around the I-526-to-visa ratio and potential range of future visa availability for China. But it’s complicated, with the number of variables involved. I’m thinking I’d better do something like a webinar or individual Zoom calls to talk through the data and scenarios, rather than just send a heavy Excel file with a book of comments. Please email me at suzanne@lucidtext.com if you are interested in my timing analysis service for China and have suggestions about the delivery and payment method that would work for you.

Investors born in Hong Kong, I still do not have news. But I notice that the October 2020 Visa Bulletin still just has the column title “CHINA-mainland born” in Chart A and Chart B, and mentions no limits for Hong Kong. So it seems to be business as usual, so far. The DOS U.S. Visa News page and the Hong Kong Consulate Immigrant Visa page have yet to interpret the Hong Kong executive order.

The employment-based visa backlog and wait times continue to be an issue of common concern, thanks to on-going lobbying around the Fairness for High-skilled Immigrants Act. I’ve written about this several times over the years, but will discuss the country caps again as time permits.

And a reminder of my PayPal link, which gives opportunity to support the effort behind this blog. As the EB-5 industry changes, your contribution will help preserve this space for in-depth, unbiased, ad-free, and freely-available EB-5 reporting.

I-526 Processing Time Report Update (country-specific)

The USCIS processing times report now offers three “estimated time range” sets for Form I-526: one for China mainland-born investors, one for other-area investors, and one for an unidentified third category. The report does not update the reporting methodology explanation. The outer end of the “estimated time range” for every category continues to be implausible, when compared against petition data. The report contains too many contradictions to accomplish its purpose of protecting USCIS from litigation, and I expect that it will receive another update shortly.

I’ve updated my processing time report log with two new tabs: one tab for logging the revised I-526 time report, and one tab with the most recent available I-526 inventory report (as of October 2018). The inventory tab offers a helpful fact check for the processing time report. For example, could it be true that USCIS is currently processing China I-526 filed 54 to 75 months ago (May 2014 to February 2016)? Look at the inventory tab, and count up (a) how many I-526 from before February 2016 were still pending back in October 2018, and (b) how many I-526 were processed since October 2018, until the visa availability approach started. That calculation gives the approximate number of February 2016 and earlier petitions that could be left to process today. The number is zero. Indeed, the processing numbers since October 2018 indicate that the worldwide backlog up to April 2017 should’ve been cleared by April 1, 2020, assuming that indeed “We generally process cases in the order we receive them.” Thus “we are currently processing China I-526 from February 2016 and earlier” appears to be a round-about way to report “we are currently processing almost zero China I-526.” Similarly “investors who filed I-526 before May 2, 2015 may submit case inquiries” is another way to say “almost zero investors may submit case inquiries.” Very clever, USCIS.