Targeted Employment Areas from November 21

November 22, 2019 3 Comments

The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Modernization Regulation Final Rule took effect on November 21, 2019, and  changed USCIS Policy for Targeted Employment Area (TEA) definitions and process.  Rather than reacting with questions and complaints, I carefully review the specific content of current TEA policy, place changes in context, and address the theoretical background and practical implications. This simple post took a great deal of work and thought.

POST AGENDA

A. Who is affected by the new TEA rules?

B. What areas can now qualify as a TEA?

C. What data can now be used to qualify a TEA?

D. Who determines TEAs, and how and when?

DISCUSSION

A. Who is affected by the new TEA rules?

New TEA rules apply specifically and only to all I-526 petitions filed on or after November 21, 2019. (The final rule for the EB-5 regulation gave a 120-day implementation/transition period: that period started upon publication of the final rule on July 24, and ended when the rule took effect on November 21.)

“Applies to Form I-526 filed on or after Nov 21” is a hard and fast rule. This is very clear in the final rule text, and confirmed by subsequent comments.  The new TEA rules apply to every I-526 filed from 11/21 – no matter if the project had previous investors or an Exemplar I-526 approval pre-11/21, and no matter if the investor is seeking to retain a pre-11/21 priority date when filing the new I-526. The new TEA rules do not apply to any I-526 filed before 11/21, even if the investor funds had not been fully invested in the NCE or deployed to the JCE before 11/21. IPO Chief Sarah Kendall reassured the IIUSA conference that her staff have been trained to adjudicate each pending I-526 based on the rules in place at the time that I-526 was filed. People who filed I-526 before 11/21/2019 are only indirectly affected by the new TEA rules, to the extent that open offerings must now be amended. But policy specifies that such conforming amendments will not count as material change for past investors.  As always, TEA qualification is not an issue at the visa application or I-829 stages.

While the new EB-5 regulation applies to all I-526 filed going forward, it does not apply entirely new rules. Rural areas, for example, have the same definition before and after November 21. The standards for a high-employment MSA TEA are no different now than they were under previous policy. Data recommendations remain unchanged. This post goes on to review what is and is not new.

B. What areas can qualify as a TEA?

The old rules gave the states authority and flexibility to designate geographic areas for TEAs. The new rules instead specify a limited list of possible TEA areas defined by DHS. From now on, a job-creating entity is in a TEA if it is in one of the following defined areas:

  1. A rural area, defined as an area that is not in a standard Metropolitan Statistical Area as defined by the Office of Management & Budget, and not within the outer boundary of any city or town having a population of over 20,000 or more based on the most recent decennial census; or
  2. A high unemployment area, defined as an area that has experienced unemployment of at least 150 percent of the national average rate. For high unemployment, “area” can only mean:
    1. A Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)
    2. A county within an MSA
    3. A county that contains a city or town with 20,000+ population
    4. A city or town with population of 20,000+ or more which is outside an MSA
    5. A single census tract, and/or
    6. A group of census tracts comprising the census tract where the job-creating entity principally does business, plus any or all directly adjacent census tracts (PDF p. 11-12 of the NPRM illustrate specifically what DHS has in mind.)

Option 2.4 and 2.6 were revised by the regulations; other options match previous policy. The new list of geographies that can qualify excludes several areas that states were willing to designate as TEAs: census blocks, census block groups, and sprawling groups of census tracts.

As before, the EB-5-funded job-creating entity must principally do business and create jobs within the TEA area.

If you have an EB-5 project in mind, how can you find out the potentially qualifying “areas” to which it belongs?  You can get a quick sense of geography just by looking up the city/town name on Wikipedia, which will tell you to what county and MSA (if any) the place belongs, and give ballpark population data. From there I’d go and enter the project address in the government’s FFIEC mapping system, which will identify the census tract for that address, show the directly adjacent census tract numbers, and confirm whether or not the address is in an MSA. Once having identified the possible geographic areas for a TEA determination, you’re ready to think about data.

C. What data can be used to qualify a TEA?

Since November 21, USCIS does not automatically approve any particular unemployment dataset for TEAs. Before November 21, USCIS also did not offer deference for unemployment data and methods. Regarding TEA data, the regulation simply repeats language that was introduced back in the May 30, 2013 EB-5 Policy Memo, and that has been included in (6)(G)(2)(A)(5) of each Policy Manual iteration since: “USCIS will review determinations of the unemployment rate” and “acceptable data sources for purposes of calculating unemployment include U.S. Census Bureau data (including data from the American Community Survey) and data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (including data from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics).”  BLS data was specifically identified as acceptable in the December 2009 Neufeld Memo. By 2012, USCIS clarified that it would accept ACS data with census share methodology for subareas not covered by BLS. The point of this history lesson: we are not standing on new ground now, regarding data.  USCIS only changed its deference to state designations of TEA geographies — there never was deference for the data portion of TEA analysis, and suggested data sources remain unchanged. In fact, TEA requirements are, if anything, clearer now than they used to be.  To quote from discussion in the regulation final rule related to acceptable data:

  • The regulation “does not provide one specific set of data from which petitioners can draw to demonstrate their investment is being made in a TEA. Rather, the burden is on the petitioner to provide DHS with evidence documenting that the area in which the petitioner has invested is a high unemployment area, and such evidence should be reliable and verifiable.” [Consistent with previous policy.]
  • “The data necessary for the TEA designation determination is publicly available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics or U.S. Census Bureau. A TEA designation request alternatively can be supported with other data, public or private, provided that DHS can validate that data.” [Consistent with previous guidance.]
  • “Regardless of which reliable and verifiable data petitioners choose to present to DHS, the data should be internally consistent. If petitioners rely on ACS data to determine the unemployment rate for the requested TEA, they should also rely on ACS data to determine the national unemployment area to which the TEA is compared.” If considering state data, the rule cautions that “petitioners may not be able to compare the state census tract data to a national unemployment rate that utilizes the same methodology.”
  • To calculate the weighted average for a group of census tracts, the Final Rule opts to keep the cumbersome method described in Footnote 41 of the NPRM, except specifying that civilian labor force rather than total labor force should be used: (1) divide the labor force of a census tract by the labor force of the entire TEA area; (2) multiply this figure by the unemployment rate of that census tract to calculate a weighted unemployment rate for that tract; (3) repeat Steps 1-2 for each tract in the TEA area; (4) sum the weighted unemployment rates for all tracts in the group to calculate a total that can then be compared with the national unemployment rate.

The final rule optimistically states that the TEA process can be “easily navigated by any petitioner–whether associated with a regional center or not–for little or no cost,” because “unemployment data is readily available by which they can determine if an investment in a particular area satisfies applicable TEA designation requirements.”

The person who wrote the rule clearly never tried to pick an address, venture online, and find and interpret appropriate unemployment data for that location at the MSA, county, city, and census tract levels. It’s not easy.  In practice, most people will have to pay qualified consultants to help with the data portion of TEA determinations. But if you still want a sense of what’s available to the public, a few links:

  • Guidance for Labor Force Statistics Data Users, published by the U.S. Census Bureau, reviews the types and sources of unemployment data available for different types of geographic areas. The EB-5 regulation merely acknowledges that “no one dataset is perfect for every scenario”; Census Bureau guidance explains which dataset to use for which scenario.
  • The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes monthly and annual unemployment data for the nation, MSAs, and counties. TEA designations have traditionally referenced the annual data –  one doesn’t want to update the TEA analysis every month, and annual data facilitates apples-to-apples comparisons across geographies. To find the annual average employment rate for an MSA or county, open the BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics page to the section on Tables and Maps Created by BLS. Within that section, scroll down to the “Annual Average” subsection, and within that subsection to “Metropolitan Area Data” and “County Data.” (This link jumps directly to annual average county data.) Alternatively, perform a search using the Featured LAU Searchable Database. Either way, you will be directed to a table crammed with data that’s ugly and not convenient to print and share, but reliable and verifiable.  The nationwide annual average employment rate, for comparison, is on this page. Monthly data is less workable for TEA purposes, but has a benefit of coming in focused and print-friendly reports.  For county data, I like the BLS reports linked to the Geographic Information > Economic Summaries page. They’re in PDF format, and handily compare county unemployment with nationwide unemployment, as required for TEA designation. If my project were in a clear high-unemployment county covered by one of these reports, I’d consider this resource.  (Just keeping in mind that BLS refreshes these reports every month, and does not archive older versions, so they’re not directly verifiable over time. Archives of monthly MSA data can be found here, but monthly county data archives are tougher to locate.)
  • The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey comes in because BLS does not collect or report unemployment data at the census tract level, or for cities outside MSAs. One can search for ACS data for employment by geography, including at the census tract level, using the advanced search function in the old factfinder.census.gov or the new data.census.gov. The census bureau search functions are not friendly to casual human users, and their employment data is relatively outdated. State TEA designations would frequently update ACS employment data for census tracts with reference to the more recent BLS unemployment data at the county level using a method called census share (as described here by BLS and here in the EB-5 context, for example). But I don’t recommend trying this at home. You’ll want an experienced professional to crunch data for any TEA below the county level. But in the meantime, to get a preliminary sense of unemployment at the census tract level, try using one of the free mapping tools for EB-5, such as by IIUSA and Impact DataSource.
  • State workforce agencies also publish labor market information, as part of a nationally designed LMI infrastructure that connects BLS, the Census Bureau, and each state. Such state-reported data should also be acceptable, as it’s linked to the BLS and ACS data specifically name-checked by DHS as evidence that “should be reliable and verifiable.” The challenge is to determine which national unemployment rate is comparable to the state unemployment rate. (For example, should use the BLS national rate if the state is referencing BLS data or ACS data updated with census share methodology, the ACS 2017 5-year estimate unemployment rate if the state’s numbers are based on ACS 2017 5-year estimates, etc.)

D. Who determines TEAs, and how and when?

We’d gotten comfortable thinking about TEAs determined in advance by state agencies, via designation letters.  That TEA letter comfort was useful for marketing, but somewhat of an illusion.  In fact, TEA determinations were never fixed as of the date of a letter, because policy has required TEA status to be determined for each investor based on the date of investment or I-526 filing (whichever came first). As discussed above, state letters were not granted automatic deference; USCIS reserved the right to question the timeliness, data, and methods. We’ve long had to work with a degree of uncertainty and case-by-case discretion by USCIS when it comes to TEAs.  The new situation is not necessarily more ambiguous, just different.

Determining the geography component of TEAS

The regulations depart from previous practice primarily by eliminating state designation of TEA geography. The power to designate an “area” now lies with DHS, and DHS has made the geography determination once and for all in advance by specifying a limited and strictly defined list of possible areas in the final rule.  Petitioners just have to pick one of the defined area types (see the list in Section B above), and provide unemployment data for that area.

DHS intended for the new reg to eliminate ambiguity and individual discretion from the geography element of TEAs, and apparently succeeded.  There’s no need for anyone to “designate” the geography portion of a TEA; a list of acceptable geographic areas has already been defined.

Determining the unemployment data component of TEAs

As discussed above, the process for data remains unchanged in theory. Whoever provided the TEA data, USCIS has always reviewed and assessed that data in context of each investor petition, and determined as part of I-526 adjudication whether TEA requirements were met.

In the past, we’ve used letters from state agencies as a vehicle for presenting unemployment data to USCIS. Nothing in the regs would prevent us from continuing to do this. DHS has relieved state agencies of the extraneous responsibility of drawing boundaries for EB-5 incentive areas. DHS has not stripped state workforce agencies of their own mandate to supply workforce data.  State agencies may or may not be amenable to continued requests from EB-5 users for unemployment reports customized to DHS-defined areas. But state letters are a tidy and convenient vehicle for reliable unemployment data, and it doesn’t hurt to ask. State workforce agencies are subject to uniform, nationally-designed standards for Labor Market Information (LMI) reporting, so USCIS couldn’t suspect the agencies of being idiosyncratic or inventive with the data portion of a TEA determination.  At least, I would try the state workforce agency, before downloading hundred-column spreadsheets myself from the internet, and before requesting unemployment analysis from some former Uber driver Joe Smith now d/b/a TEA Designations, LLC.

In the past, we’ve used consultants, particularly EB-5 experienced economists, to help identify TEAs and approach states for letters. Now, we can ask those same consultants to prepare letters with unemployment analysis to present to investors and USCIS. We should demand that the consultant’s work product meet these standards: (1) define the geographic area with specific references to the latest EB-5 policy/regs, (2) identify the sources for population and employment data with sufficient specificity to allow the reader to go online and find the publicly-available data referenced, (3) show all the steps in any calculation, (4) explain, with references to the EB-5 regulation and BLS and/or Census Bureau guidance, why the analysis is reasonable. If you, as a reader, can verify the data and see that the analysis aligns with authoritative guidance, odds are the USCIS adjudicator will likewise find it reliable and verifiable. I’d demand more detail and footnotes from a consultant report than from a state letter. Compared with the Georgia Department of Labor, Joe Smith has a hurdle to prove his data and methods.

Whoever wrote the regulation seems to think that people can easily go online and get appropriate unemployment data to print out as evidence.  As briefly discussed above, BLS and ACS data is not that easy to navigate or interpret (or even print, for that matter), and info from third party mapping programs and other sources may or may not be up-to-date, reliable, and verifiable. It takes some expertise even to accomplish a simple task like choosing a national unemployment rate that’s internally consistent with a given local area unemployment rate. And it takes considerable expertise to bolster a TEA analysis with references and explanations that leave no crack for USCIS questions.  So I think we’re still in a world of securing TEAs using letters and reports – the only question is: who prepares them.

Some wondered whether DHS itself could start providing TEA designations in advance of investor petitions. The regulation states that “this rule does not establish a separate application or process for obtaining TEA designation from USCIS prior to filing the EB-5 immigrant petition and USCIS will not issue separate TEA designation letters for areas of high unemployment.” The regulation offers that a regional center may seek TEA determination by filing an exemplar petition, and “If the exemplar application is approved, the approval (including the TEA determination) will receive deference in individual investor petition filings associated with that exemplar in accordance with existing USCIS policy (for example, absent a material change in facts affecting the underlying favorable determination or its applicability to eligibility for the individual investor).” However, this offer is 100% useless and void, unless USCIS can start providing exemplar approvals in less than the time that it takes unemployment data to expire, and thus become inapplicable to individual investor eligibility.  The currently posted I-924 processing time is 62 to 115 months. No investor can claim TEA status at the time of investment or I-526 filing based on a TEA determination calculated five to ten years previously.

Regarding timing, the regulations do not imply a change from past practice.  A TEA determination has always needed to be valid at the time of an EB-5 investor’s investment or I-526 filing, whichever comes first. A TEA determination has always been valid so long as the underlying data is the most current available. Most state letters were effective for up to a year because they calculated unemployment rates from annual average data that is, naturally, updated just once a year. The regulations do not change what unemployment data is available, or when BLS and the Census Bureau publish updates. The regs do not suggest that DHS had a problem with the unemployment data and methods that states have used all these years, only a problem with how states were willing to gerrymander geographies. So I do not see any new policy or new ambiguity, when it comes to timing of TEA determinations.   When a consultant creates a TEA analysis, just be sure to specify the validity period for the underlying data, and point out that this defines the shelf life of the TEA determination.

Filed under EB-5 Law & Policy, EB-5 Resources

11/21 Welcome to the New EB-5

November 21, 2019 12 Comments

The EB-5 Modernization Regulation takes effect today, November 21, 2019. As a reminder, the USCIS EB-5 Page summarizes what’s new, the full text of the final rule gives all the detail and background of the new regs, and the USCIS Policy Manual EB-5 section contains current policy as updated by the regs. It’s possible that rules will be changed again sooner or later by legislation, but that has not happened yet. (The regional center program’s most recent authorization also coincidentally expires today. It will be extended without affecting the regulation, assuming that the Senate and President sign off on the clean continuing resolution that the House passed on Tuesday. I track developments on my Washington Updates page.)

To recap what’s new beginning today, thanks to the effective regulations:

  1. I-526 filed from today through 2024 are subject to a minimum investment of $1.8 million, or $900,000 in a Targeted Employment Area (TEA). After that, investment amounts will be adjusted again based on inflation.
  2. I-526 filed from today have different TEA issues. The definitions are more restricted, and the process has changed. It’s no longer possible to simply order a TEA designation letter from the state, and expect USCIS to defer to that letter. Instead of pre-designation by the states or DHS, TEAs get confirmed on a case-by-case basis as part of I-526 adjudication, based on data provided by the petitioner. (This post discusses the detail.)
  3. From today, people can have the option of filing a new I-526 while retaining the priority date of a previously-approved I-526. (This post discusses the detail.)
  4. From today, people who are removing conditions can enjoy some process improvements related to I-829.

And that’s all. A few simple changes, but with significant consequences. EB-5 usage will be different now that the price tag is two to three times higher than it used to be, now that urban TEAs are more limited, and now that there’s no longer a deadline to hurry investment decisions.

Filed under EB-5 Law & Policy

EB-5 Legislation? (S.2778, S.2540)

November 15, 2019 25 Comments

Since 2015, when the last three-year regional center program authorization expired, there’s been much effort to get EB-5 legislation passed. At minimum, we need Congress to put the regional center program on a stable footing by giving it a long-term authorization. (Since 2015, the program has been extended 17 times, each time for just a few weeks or months.)  Other features that one faction or another hope to get into legislation: update the EB-5 minimum investment amounts, revise the Targeted Employment Area incentive, implement additional integrity measures, improve procedures, and provide visa relief.

However, the status quo has been profitable, and those who profited most have resisted change. Several times since 2015, negotiators were reportedly close to getting EB-5 legislation attached to a funding bill, but ultimately did not succeed. Reviewing the history gives perspective on where we are today.

  • December 2015: Senators Grassley, Leahy, Goodlatte, Conyers, Issa, and Lofgren drafted legislation that would have given the RC program a 4-year authorization, changed the EB-5 investment amount to $1.2 million ($800,000 in a TEA), restricted TEA definitions, and added integrity measures. According to Senator Grassley, “On that first day of December negotiations, there was a lot of discussion about how New York wouldn’t be able to compete with rural America if our reforms were enacted.  They thought the bill was unfair to urban areas.” Grassley claimed that he tried to compromise, but could not go far enough. ABC News reported that “the legislation was defeated by a group of lawmakers led by New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, who argued that security improvements were a good idea, but the way the reform was written would unfairly hurt investments in his home state.” ABC quoted a Schumer spokesman: “Sen. Schumer supports reforms that will bring transparency and accountability to the EB-5 program, but strongly believes that the EB-5 program should continue to act as a catalyst for thousands upon thousands of jobs throughout New York.”
  • December 2016: A version of the The American Job Creation and Investment Promotion Reform Act of 2016 originally introduced by Representatives Goodlatte and Conyers was seriously discussed for inclusion in the December 2016 funding bill. This legislation would have given the RC program a 6-year authorization, gradually increased the the TEA EB-5 investment amount to $800,000 while leaving the $1M standard unchanged, revised TEA definitions, and revised integrity measures. But this also proved unacceptable. Senator Grassley wrote a post listing the specific reasons for “why this package was not acceptable to some – notably the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that was the most rigid in not compromising” and complained again that “the industry love the status quo and the billions of dollars that pour in to affluent areas.” The Wall Street Journal reported that “Related Cos., a developer of massive mixed-use projects, has waged an aggressive campaign to head off proposed changes to the so-called EB-5 program in an apparent effort to keep low-cost money flowing to luxury urban projects such as its $20 billion Hudson Yards development in Manhattan.” A few million in lobbying dollars proved money well spent for Related, which eventually raised $1.2 billion in EB-5 investment for Hudson Yards. According to the WSJ article from January 2017, Related Companies “found support from a handful of key senators including Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), who have been resistant to the changes opposed by the developers.” A spokesman told WSJ that Schumer believes good projects in EB-5 “should rise to the top based on how many jobs they’ll create,” and that the government shouldn’t be trying to direct development to specific parts of cities.
  • March 2018: The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa and RC Program Comprehensive Reform Act negotiated by Grassley, Goodlatte, Cornyn, Flake reportedly came close to inclusion in the March 2018 funding bill. This bill would have given the RC program a 5-year authorization, increased the EB-5 investment amount to $1.025 million ($925,000 in a TEA), revised TEA definitions, and revised integrity measures. I saw this bill as a generous compromise to urban interests. But the bill also failed, and Senator Grassley had an opinion as usual about what happened. “For the last year, my staff, along with Chairman Goodlatte, Senator Cornyn, and Senator Flake’s teams, has worked around the clock to produce an EB-5 reform package. Everyone made numerous concessions in order to reach a deal, and after more than twenty meetings and countless hours of drafting, we produced a reform package that was fair. These reforms weren’t acceptable to the big moneyed New York industry stakeholders who currently dominate the program. And because big money interests aren’t happy with these reforms, we’ve been told they won’t become law.”

This story gets repetitive. But now, circumstances have changed, due to the EB-5 Modernization Regulation to take effect on November 21, 2019. The regulations will create a new status quo of exclusive TEA definitions and investment amount increases that would tend to reduce the flow of EB-5 investment overall, and channel EB-5 investment away from many urban areas. That’s not the status quo that EB-5 protectionists want to protect, and now legislation offers the only path to change.

That brings us to S.2778 – Immigrant Investor Program Reform Act, introduced by Senators Mike Rounds (R-SD), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Cornyn (R-TX). Charles Schumer (D-NY) has already signed on as an additional co-sponsor, pivoting from his traditional role as quasher of EB-5 bills. Robert Maples of Greenberg Traurig, who previously expressed Related’s objections to the EB-5 regulations, praises S.2778 for “proposing long overdue improvements to modernize the EB-5 program in alignment with industry and market principles.” IIUSA lauds “the EB-5 industry’s ability to work together and come to an agreement on many issues that until now left industry stakeholders divided.” Perhaps we finally have an EB-5 bill that can avoid being blocked.

S.2778 proposes Targeted Employment Area changes that would allow EB-5 capital to continue to flow to high-quality urban projects that naturally attract investment, instead of countering market principles by encouraging capital toward projects in less prosperous areas. The bill would shift TEA definitions to privilege the areas that major regional centers already favor (Opportunity Zones, closed military bases), and – more to the point – would minimize the incentive to choose a TEA investment over a standard investment.  In the regulations comment linked above, Related Companies argued that a $100,000 differential would be fair and reasonable (avoiding the problem — from Related’s perspective — of “financial incentive for foreign investors to invest in TEAs, regardless of the project”), and that’s what S.2778 proposes.  While past statute and the new EB-5 regulations offer a 50% TEA discount, S.2778 would offer a 9% TEA discount, with $1,100,000 standard investment and $1,000,000 TEA investment. This would essentially eliminate the monetary TEA incentive. As a concession, S.2778 offers two additional TEA incentives related to timing: expedited I-526 processing, and set-aside visas. These are safe concessions for New York City, because expedited processing is limited by USCIS’s ability to deliver such a benefit, and the visa set-aside incentive is limited to the number of visas offered (must stay under 3,000, or the incentive disappears) and to the few countries that need a visa incentive (China, Vietnam, India).  Current law already sets aside 3,000 visas annually for TEA investments (INA Sec. 203(b)(5)(B)), but people forget that because the existing TEA set-side has had zero incentive effect in practice. Set-asides only have any incentive value if limited to a few. The industry consensus proposal offered to give some potency to the new TEA set-asides by restricting them to TEA investors filing after the date of enactment. S.2778 does not specifically state such a restriction, however. I hope the restriction is not still implied, because reserving up 3,000 visas annually for incoming investors and their families would be at the direct cost of reducing visas available to the tens of thousands of past EB-5 applicants (mostly TEA investors) who are currently waiting for visas. To the extent that visa set-asides and expedited processing can work at all as incentives, they work by offering queue-cutting. That would not be fair to 70,000+ people in the queue before the rule was made. To the extent that the timing-related incentives would not work at all, they are unfair to parties in negotiation who accepted these concessions in faith that they would be effective TEA incentives to replace the monetary incentive.

Visa-limiting TEA incentives aside, S.2778 offers some  backlog relief. The bill would make no additional EB-5 visas available, but would soften the pain of waiting for visa availability. S.2778 offers the possibility of parole (entry to the United States) and work authorization for EB-5 applicants with I-526 approval who have been waiting over three years for a visa. This would extend to EB-5 investors abroad the benefit already available to applicants in the U.S. who file I-485 to adjust status. Otherwise, parole has been restricted to urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons. (Links FYI that describe how parole currently works in the I-485 context and for applicants abroad.) I wonder about the politics of offering parole to EB-5 investors, since the administration cancelled parole for immigrant entrepreneurs and threatened to take it away from U.S. military families.  But if this benefit can be enacted (and DHS consents to implement it), parole could really help EB-5 investors stuck abroad waiting for visas – particularly direct EB-5 investors who struggle to manage their US businesses from afar. This is not a visa giveaway, does not change the EB-5 visa limit, and only offers the weak promise that DHS may “temporarily parole… on a case-by-case basis,” but at least it’s something. Besides parole, the bill offers to soften the pain of long wait times by permanently protecting children from age-out. I understand that IIUSA pushed very hard for the additional relief of applying the EB-5 visa limit to investors, as intended by EB-5 program architects, not investors plus family, but that provision did not make the final bill. Visa relief has never had much chance, considering that immigration politics does not favor increasing visa numbers, and that there’s little self-interest for the dominant regional centers in reducing the time they have to deploy and redeploy low-cost EB-5 capital.

Other positive features of S.2778 include 6-year authorization for the regional center program and recourse for investors and projects following termination of a regional center.

If I could choose three modest improvements on S.2778, I would suggest:

  • Authorize DHS to assess fees necessary to meet reasonable processing time goals for EB-5 investor petitions. This is one of the few good ideas in Grassley and Leahy’s S.2540 EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act, which defines targets (in days) for each form, and charges USCIS to set fees to allow meeting those targets. The latest proposed fee rule from DHS shows that DHS will not, on its own initiative, allocate resources to improve the current status quo of 2-4 year processing times for I-526 and I-829. Congress needs to step in to push DHS toward processing integrity, and to authorize the resources necessary. (S.2778 suggests premium processing with a fee, but only for regional center applications, amendments, and reports, not for investor petitions. S.2778 suggests collecting $51,000 in additional fees from investors, but specifies that these are to be used for enforcement activities, not processing improvements.)
  • Delete the $10,000 annual fee for regional centers that are not-for-profit or have fewer than 20 investors. If Congress wants to see at least a few face-saving EB-5 projects in distressed areas, it should keep the regional center option affordable to small entities, and open to areas that won’t have high-volume deal flow. A $20,000 annual fee – or $50,000 annual fee for that matter — is nothing to a regional center handling hundreds of millions of EB-5 capital. But a minimum a $10,000 fee (especially on top of all the other cumbersome red tape suggested by the bill) could eliminate small regional centers with modest and occasional EB-5 capital raises. The $10,000 minimum regional center fee is a handy as an anti-competitive measure, benefiting large, high-volume and established regional centers by helping to clear the deck of small players, but such a winnowing would not benefit EB-5’s potential or reputation.
  • Include at least one genuine integrity measure – i.e. at least one measure that involves something besides reporting to and making records available to DHS. At minimum, why not borrow another good idea in Grassley’s S.2540: require regional centers to make their annual statements available to their investors. Record-keeping, reporting, and certifications are fine activities in themselves, but not anti-fraud measures if just paper disappearing into the vaults at USCIS, along with all the other paper that doesn’t get read for years. But that’s as far as S.2778 goes. S.2778 excludes an integrity measure that’s been in other EB-5 reform bills, including S.2540: the requirement to have an independent fund administrator to monitor the deployment of funds into any affiliated job-creating entity, and keep alien investors informed about the deployment.  In the cover article to their 2018 database of SEC actions, Friedland & Calderon note that “virtually every SEC civil enforcement action involving EB-5 fraud the NCE did not have an independent fund administrator, escrow conditions were ignored, and periodic reports of the status of investor funds were not furnished to investors.” Effective integrity measures had better address such proven vulnerabilities. It’s hard to imagine that any of the specific SEC cases would’ve been forestalled just by enhanced reporting to and threat of sanctions from USCIS. If I were putting EB5 language into a funding bill, and serious about program integrity, I’d consider taking the fund administration language from S.2540.

I will not bother to say more about Grassley and Leahy’s S.2540 EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act — a bill that no one will support. S.2540 alienates prosperous urban interests by not replaceing the TEA rules in the EB-5 regulations, and excludes most everyone else with a blizzard of restrictions, requirements, and fees that would be too much for most stakeholders serving distressed urban and rural areas. S.2540 doesn’t propose to simply terminate the regional center program, but the effect would be pretty close. So S.2778 is what we have, a bill with enough benefits for enough people to win support. The industry is rallying round and making positive statements. There’s some hope that language from S.2778 will get included in a funding bill this year, trump unwanted regulations, and provide desperately needed long-term authorization for the regional center program. Perhaps I too should pretend that S.2778 is an excellent bill and represents fair compromise.

A few links to other perspectives on the legislation:

Filed under EB-5 Law & Policy

October 2019 Oppenheim EB-5 wait time estimates

November 13, 2019 11 Comments

Department of State Visa Control Office Chief Charles Oppenheim presented about EB-5 visa availability at the IIUSA conference on October 29, 2019. Here are his presentation slides and my recording. (Update: Lee Li of IIUSA has written a helpful slide-by-slide commentary on Oppenheim’s presentation in his article Data Analysis on Fiscal Year 2019 EB-5 Visa Number Usage & Estimated Visa Waiting Lines.)

The October 2019 presentation suggested encouraging headlines: shorter wait times and faster-moving visa bulletin dates than previously predicted. Behind the headlines lies a vexed story that I shall tackle in this difficult post.

Post Agenda:

  1. Put Oppenheim’s October 2019 EB-5 timing estimate in context of past estimates
  2. Discuss how to read the “EB-5 Applicants with Petitions on file at NVC and Estimated USCIS Applicant Data” slide in Oppenheim’s presentations
  3. Review the factors that can cause the EB-5 backlog to grow and shrink
  4. Collect available data relevant to interpreting Oppenheim’s estimates for China, Vietnam, and India
  5. Interpret Oppenheim’s estimates for India
  6. Discuss how backlog data relates to estimated Visa Bulletin final action dates

1. October 2019 Presentation in Context

Oppenheim estimates total EB-5 backlog size (actual applicants at the National Visa Center plus estimated applicants associated with pending I-526) and then calculates wait times as a function of backlog divided by annual visas available.  The following table compares key results from Oppenheim’s October 2019 presentation with previous presentations on October 30, 2018 and May 6, 2019.

Summary of Oppenheim Estimates 10/2018 to 10/2019
Potential year wait to visa availability if I-526 filed “today”October 30, 2018 PresentationMay 6, 2019 PresentationOctober 29, 2018 Presentation
Brazil1.51.61.4
China mainland1416.516.2
India5.78.46.7
South Korea2.22.43
China Taiwan1.721.9
Vietnam7.27.67.1
Backlog size (total applicants) as of…October 1, 2018April 1, 2019October 1, 2019
Brazil                   1,010                   1,114                       977
China mainland                 52,828                 49,537                 48,589
India                   4,014                   5,851                   4,707
South Korea                   1,513                   1,676                   2,121
China Taiwan                   1,162                   1,386                   1,342
Vietnam                   5,008                   5,269                   4,971
Worldwide Total                 69,060                 73,157                 70,198

Note that Oppenheim’s backlog and wait time estimates fell between May and October this year for all countries except South Korea, with particularly significant  reduction in the wait time estimate for India. I didn’t expect that, considering reports of a flood of I-526 filings ahead of the November 21 regulations deadline. What’s the story? Are there indeed fewer people in line for an EB-5 visa now than there were back in May, or has there been a change or omission in Oppenheim’s calculation? If fewer people in line, how did that happen? If a change or omission in the calculation, what is it, and should that cause us to rethink Oppenheim’s past or current wait time estimates? Read on…

Interpreting the “EB-5 Applicants with Petitions on file at NVC and Estimated USCIS Applicant Data” slide

The data quoted above comes from this key slide, a version of which is included in each of Oppenheim’s IIUSA presentations since 2018.

This slide is important because Oppenheim’s wait time estimates are calculated from the orange column. For example 977/700=1.4 year estimated wait for Brazil. 4,707/700=6.7 year estimated wait for India. The calculations assume average 700 visas available per year under the country cap, though the total can vary by year. The denominator for China is less predictable. Oppenheim estimated a 16.2-year wait for China in October 2019, which means that he must have been assuming 48,589/16.2 = 3,000 annual visas available on average to China going forward. (Aside: Oppenheim did not explain why he chose the 3,000-visa assumption for China. China received 4,326 visas in FY2019, and Oppenheim estimates that 5,270 visas will be available to China in FY2020. Average visas available to China going forward will only average as low as 3,000 if rest-of-the-world demand continues to rise going forward, which seems unlikely considering impending investment amount increases. Note also that the wait time estimates should have been tagged for petitions filed as of October 1, 2019–since that’s the date of the data upon which they are based–not for petitions filed as of October 29, 2019. Considering the likelihood of a filing surge in October 2019, this distinction could be significant.)

In his October 2019 presentation, and in follow-up discussion in person, Oppenheim clarified these points about how to read the EB-5 Applicants slide:

  • The “Actual Number of Applicants at NVC” column is just what it says: an accounting of the actual applicants with petitions on file at the National Visa Center as of October 1, 2019. This column does not include people who have I-526 approval but without active petitions on file at NVC for one reason or another. It does not include applicants currently seeking a visa through adjustment of status with USCIS. The column includes no assumption about the number of actual applicants at NVC who may eventually get denied. The NVC column is most significant to Oppenheim’s visa bulletin calculations, because it indicates how many people are ready to claim a visa. (The I-526 column estimates potential future demand. But no one in that column is currently qualified to claim a visa, and Oppenheim does not know for sure when and if those potential applicants will emerge from the I-526 process and become qualified.)
  • “DoS ESTIMATED Number of Applicants with Petitions on File at USCIS” refers specifically to I-526 petitions, and does not include I-485 petitions. This column estimates the future visa applicants associated with pending I-526 using this formula: actual I-526 pending at USCIS * assumption about approval rate for these I-526 * assumption about average visas per approved I-526. The pending I-526 data and approval rate assumption come from USCIS. The visas-to-I-526 assumption uses the “average percentage of EB-5 principal investors” Department of State data point that divides EB-5 visas issued to investors by total EB-5 visas issued to investors plus family. Oppenheim could not disclose the specific numbers used to calculate this column for October 2019. I’m particularly sad that he couldn’t disclose what USCIS told him about pending I-526 by country. He did volunteer that the I-526 approval rate assumption in the 10/2019 DoS estimate is the same for all countries, and lower than the approval rate assumption used for previous estimates. He further indicated that the “percentage of principals” assumption in the 10/2019 DoS estimate varies by country, is based on averages for visas issued in FY2019 and FY2018.
  • “Estimated Grand Total” equals the blue column plus the green column. Oppenheim has not been counting I-485 applicants anywhere in the table because historically a small percentage of EB-5 visas have gone through adjustment of status. He agreed that it would be a good idea to count pending I-485 applicants in future backlog estimates. (Another hint that the “Estimated Grand Total” might be missing something: Oppenheim estimates about 48,600 total applicants for China. This seems unexpectedly low considering that at least 35,500 Chinese filed I-526 since the start of FY2015, per USCIS data, and few of those Chinese could’ve received visas yet considering that the visa bulletin still has a November 1, 2014 final action date for China. So either the China backlog has in fact experienced major attrition along the way — plausible, considering sentiment among past Chinese investors — or some category of Chinese who still could apply for a visa are not being counted in the NVC or I-526 columns.)

Potential Factors in Backlog Total Change

The size of the EB-5 backlog is constantly changing, as people enter the line by filing I-526 and bringing family, and leave it by losing eligibility or receiving visas. To review specific factors that can cause change over time to the numbers in Oppenheim’s backlog calculations, and/or the actual backlog:

Number of “Actual Number of Applicants at NVC”

  • Decreased by applicants receiving visas
  • Decreased by applicants being denied visas or losing eligibility (e.g. aging out, I-526 revoked)
  • Decreased by applicants abandoning their petitions (need to contact NVC annually to avoid this)
  • Increased by more investors receiving I-526 approval and filing visa applications (thus moving from the green column to the blue column)

“DoS ESTIMATED Number of Applicants with Petition on File at USCIS”

  • Increased by I-526 filings
  • Decreased by I-526 approvals and denials
  • Increased or decreased by changes to the DoS assumption about number of pending I-526 that will be approved
  • Increased or decreased by changes to the DoS assumption about how many family members will be associated with each principal applicant

“Estimated Grand Total”

  • Increases if increases from incoming I-526 filings plus approval rate and family member assumptions exceed decreases from outgoing applicants who received visas or lost eligibility.
  • Decreases if the opposite data and assumptions prevail.
  • Could increase if Oppenheim started to count populations not included in the “Actual at NVC” and “Pending at USCIS” columns. This includes EB-5 applicants on pending I-485, and possibly other people with potential eligibility (I-526 approval) who do not currently have active petitions at NVC.

Data

Here is my spreadsheet that collects data particularly relevant to questions about Oppenheim’s wait time estimates in 2018 and 2019 – basically, available data related to the above bullet points.  I gaze at and play with these numbers as I to try to back calculate Oppenheim’s estimates, answer questions, and interpret a story. I’m not showing my messy calculations, but present the inputs for the convenience of others working with the similar questions. Curating this spreadsheet was not easy.

Example Interpretation and Application

Take India as an example of the challenge to interpret Oppenheim’s estimates.

Oppenheim’s estimated India wait time fell by 1.7 years between April 1, 2019 and October 1, 2019 because Oppenheim estimated that the India backlog fell by 1,078 applicants during that period —  Q3 and Q4 of FY2019. This backlog reduction is the net of 66 additional applicants at NVC and 1,144 fewer estimated applicants associated with pending I-526.

DOS issued 252 visas to Indians in Q3-Q4 of FY2019. (We don’t know how many visa applications were denied.) 252+66=318, so apparently the 1,144+ applicants who left the I-526 column between May and October did not all transfer over to the NVC column.

It could be that many applicants were indeed approved out of the I-526 column but then disappeared into uncounted categories—ie the pending I-485 pool and the still-preparing-a-visa-application pool. If that were true, then those people are out of Oppenheim’s calculation but not out of the queue in reality. In that case Oppenheim’s latest wait time would be an underestimate.

Or, maybe few applicants were actually approved out of the I-526 column, but the I-526 column slimmed nevertheless thanks to downgraded assumptions about I-526 approval rates and family size. Oppenheim confirmed in follow-up conversation that he did indeed change assumptions about future approval rates (significantly) and family sizes (insignificantly) for the October 2019 calculation. If I-526 receipts and adjudications were about equal in Q4 (as they were in Q3), then a changed visas-per-pending-I-526 assumption could explain the entire 20% change in estimated  applicants associated with India I-526. If I-526 receipts in fact exceeded adjudications in Q4 – as I would’ve thought considering the expected pre-regs filing surge and continually lengthening processing times reports – then the visas-per-pending-I-526 assumption must have fallen by even more than 20%. If Oppenheim’s revised visas-to-investor assumptions are more accurate than his previous assumptions, then the wait time estimates from May 2019 and October 2018 were overestimates. If not, the October 2019 estimate is an underestimate.

Oppenheim’s backlog estimate does not count applicants on pending I-485. In FY2018, consular processing accounted for over 90% of visas issued to China and Vietnam, and 67% of visas issued to Indians, according to the Annual Report of the Visa Office. If there continue to be a significant number of Indian EB-5 applicants on I-485, then Oppenheim is undercounting the India backlog. For China and Vietnam, it appears relatively safe to only look at NVC numbers.

Oppenheim’s backlog estimate does not make an assumption about the number of applicants pending at NVC who will not end up claiming visas. However, this factor might be significant in reality, as suggested by Oppenheim’s commentary on the visa bulletin. The India final action date jumped in August and September 2019 thanks to an unexpectedly large return of visa numbers. Those returned numbers represent people who had been at the head of the NVC queue but then were denied at the visa interview, or missed the interview. Their disappearance resulted in visas that had been marked out for them returning to NVC and becoming available to people who had expected a longer wait time.

Overall, contemplating the numbers for India, I conjecture:

  • That there can’t after all have been much of an Indian I-526 filing surge at least up to September 30, 2019 (Indeed, only South Korea clearly experienced a major filing surge in FY2019 Q4)
  • That Oppenheim must now be estimating an I-526 approval rate well under 75%
  • That a relatively low approval rate going forward is plausible, given trends at USCIS, and would mean that previous wait time estimates assuming higher future approval rates were overestimates
  • That the current India wait time estimate is likely still an underestimate because it does not count I-485

But such conjectures are exhausting and unsatisfying. I’ve temporarily suspended my EB-5 timing estimate service, because it’s so tedious to try to navigate and quantify all the “if/thens.” And then any estimate must be so laboriously and frustratingly qualified. Until now, I have generally used Oppenheim’s point-in-time estimates as anchors for priority-date-specific timing estimates. But that doesn’t work as well when Oppenheim’s assumptions change between the points in unknown ways.  When USCIS finally publishes I-526 data for FY2019 Q4 (and even better, FY2020 Q1), we’ll at least have a few more facts to anchor estimates and to help interpret Oppenheim’s estimates. And please please please USCIS, why can’t you continue to publish data on pending I-526 by country and month of priority date? This is so important to program integrity, and not justifiable as a state secret.

Backlog Estimates and the Visa Bulletin

Oppenheim’s IIUSA presentation gave predictions for Visa Bulletin final action dates.

Oppenheim Final Action Date Predictions on October 29, 2019
 December 2019 Visa BulletinOctober 2020 Visa Bulletin Prediction
China MainlandNovember 15, 2014Best case: March 8, 2015Worst case: February 15, 2015
IndiaJanuary 1, 2018Best case: currentWorst case: November 2017
VietnamDecember 1, 2016Best case: June 1, 2017Worst case: April 1, 2017

Again, the India case is a challenge. How could the October 2020 Visa Bulletin possibly become “current” for India in one year (meaning visas available to qualified applicants for all priority dates) if Oppenheim doesn’t expect October 2019 priority dates to have visas available for another 6+ years? This becomes possible if the pool of qualified applicants remains small despite the large total backlog. In other words, if most of the 6+-year India backlog remains bogged down in slow I-526 processing, and thus unable to claim available visas. Oppenheim apparently foresees that Department of State could find itself in October 2020 with 700 visas to give India and well under 700 Indian applicants pending at NVC. That could happen if USCIS keeps up its low volume of approvals. This situation is less likely for Vietnam and China, because there are already significant NVC backlogs for those countries from back when USCIS adjudicated more petitions.

Among the many bad consequences of slow and chaotic I-526 processing: it devalues priority dates. In December 2019, Department of State offers visas to Indians with priority dates up to January 1, 1018, according to the visa bulletin.  Meanwhile, USCIS is processing investor petitions filed 29 to 50 months ago,  according to its processing times report. That means that Indians with late 2017 priority dates can be claiming visas now, ahead of Indians with 2015, 2016, and 2017 priority dates who are still stuck in I-526 processing. Obviously, the backlog is not moving in order by priority date.  In a queue system, a person’s wait time should be a function of the number of other people already in line at the time he or she entered the queue. That would allow for fairness and predictability. But the EB-5 queue is falling into disorder thanks to the two-step process. When USCIS is slow to adjudicate I-526 petitions, and apparently advances them out of date order, then priority dates lose their predictive value. It’s not fair that an Indian with a November 2017 priority date can claim a visa today, while an Indian with a November 2015 priority date isn’t even outside of normal I-526 processing times according to USCIS. It’s not fair when wait time estimates have to ask not only “how many people were in line before me” but “how many people will be able cut in line before me thanks to disordered USCIS processing?” But that’s the fact that we face today, thanks to USCIS processing failures.

Ironically, the “best case” scenario for the October 2020 visa bulletin assumes a worst case scenario for I-526 processing. If USCIS speeds up after all, approving more I-526 and thus advancing more applicants to the visa stage, than future visa bulletin final action dates will move further back.

Filed under EB-5 Statistics

10/29 Kendall remarks for IIUSA

November 8, 2019 Leave a comment

The USCIS website has published Immigrant Investor Program Office 2019 IIUSA EB-5 Industry Forum Sarah M. Kendall Remarks October 29, 2019. (I also recorded the remarks, but my recording adds nothing of significance. Kendall followed the script.)  This post highlights what I did and did not learn from Kendall’s remarks.

I-924A Tips

Kendall helpfully offered specific tips for avoiding questions on the Form I-924A Annual Report:

  • Avoid inconsistencies with information previously provided to USCIS (and when something is different, explain)
  • Remember to provide government-issued photo ID for all regional center principals, as required
  • Remember that changes to a Regional Center’s name, ownership, organizational structure, principals, and geographic area must be reported separately with a Form I-924 amendment; RCs cannot simply notify USCIS of such changes on an I-924A.

Processing Times

Sarah Kendall mentioned three factors behind low production and high processing times in 2019: the lapse in regional center program authorization from 12/22 to 1/25 that disrupted processes, a training session for I-526 adjudicators and economists, and a greater focus on program integrity. The first two factors each cost a few isolated weeks of adjudicative time, so presumably the third factor is the major reason for a massive 60% drop in production. “In 2019, IPO focused on enhancing the integrity of the program and working to find ways to protect the program from abusive actors. This has meant greater coordination with agencies in the law enforcement community and with other partners, including at the Securities and Exchange Commission. …We have also invested in building more robust quality assurance and control programs to ensure consistent adjudication practices. …All of this has some impact on processing times.” Kendall referenced “understandable concern in the community” regarding processing times, but did not otherwise apologize for low production or foresee improvement.  And why would she, if the processing slowdown resulted from an enforcement focus that she does not regret? “We have a dedicated and hard-working staff who continue to handle this complex caseload with diligence and integrity. …IPO has made structural changes to ensure continued program integrity. …we continue to place importance on continually assessing and improving of the EB-5 program’s integrity. … Safeguarding the integrity of the EB-5 program is of paramount importance to USCIS and to the public. We seek to effectively administer the program and guard against abuse.” Kendall concluded by stating that “the expectations we have for ourselves are to run this program with efficiency and with integrity.” But the efficiency expectation does not appear anywhere else in her remarks. Nor does Kendall indicate any awareness that efficiency is also an integrity issue. She may not realize that USCIS’s posted 2-5 year processing times serve to attract abusive actors, promising time for fraud to flourish, while discouraging responsible actors who want their projects and investors to succeed.

Other notes

Otherwise, Kendall’s remarks largely follow the principle expressed by that exemplary civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby: “So long as there is anything to be gained by saying nothing, it is always better to say nothing than anything.”

  • TEA determinations: Kendall restated what’s stated in the regulations, without adding clarification or interpretation.
  • Partial investment before November 21: Kendall restated existing policy related the “actively in the process of investing” option, and reiterated the regulation provision that petitions are subject to the rules effective as of the date they were filed. Her comments did not break any ground on this topic, as discussed in my previous post.
  • Redeployment: Kendall briefly referenced existing guidance in the Policy Manual, and stated that IPO still continues to work on clarifications (with public input still welcome).
  • Protection for innocent investors: Kendall generally summarized policy that constrains the flexibility USCIS is able to offer innocent investors when a regional center or project encounters problems.
  • Regional Center oversight: Kendall argued that requirement for regional centers to engage in monitoring and oversight is not new.
  • Premium processing: As always, USCIS is not considering a premium processing option for I-526.

 

Filed under Updates from USCIS

11/6 USCIS Policy Manual Update

November 6, 2019 3 Comments

The USCIS Policy Manual has been updated as of today with some edits to the EB-5 section in Volume 6 Part G,  and Adjustment of Status section in Volume 7 Part A. As usual, I saved the revised EB-5 section as a Word document in my folder of PM editions, and made a comparison document that redlines changes since the previous version.  I approached the policy manual update with some excitement, wondering (1) whether the PM update would add guidance or detail on TEA designation or priority date retention, and (2) whether USCIS would try to slip in any other policy changes under the cover of a regulations update. The answer to both questions is: no.  The PM says even less about new TEA rules and priority date retention than the reg says. The 11/6 PM update does not reflect all changes in the reg (i.e. does not include the new provision regarding evidence of property transferred from abroad, and does not mention most I-829 changes.)

Update: Robert Divine has written an article for IIUSA that reviews the changes.

Here is the update notice email from USCIS.

From: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services <uscis@public.govdelivery.com>
Sent: November 6, 2019 9:41 AM
Subject: Policy Update Notice on EB-5 Modernization Final Rule

USCIS is revising its policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual to align with the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Modernization Final Rule, published on July 24, 2019, and effective Nov. 21, 2019.

We are updating the USCIS Policy Manual to conform with the final rule’s provisions, which include:

  • Priority date retention for certain EB-5 immigrants;
  • An increase in minimum investment amounts;
  • Reforms to targeted employment area designations; and
  • Clarification of USCIS procedures for the removal of conditions on permanent residence.

Please see the Policy Alert for more detailed information on this update.

Filed under EB-5 Law & Policy

Conference Rumors (partial investment, visa wait times)

November 5, 2019 8 Comments

I heard IPO Chief Sarah Kendall and Department of State Visa Control Office Chief Charles Oppenheim speak last week at the IIUSA conference in Seattle.  I’ll blog in detail about these talks and other news and insights from the conference as time permits, but first to quickly address a couple misconceptions that may affect current decision-making.

Rumor credits Kendall’s talk with announcing that it’s now acceptable to file I-526 with less than $500,000 before November 21, and Oppenheim’s talk with announcing that EB-5 backlogs have fallen. These impressions are not quite accurate, in context.

Sarah Kendall confirmed a point related to TEA requirements as they intersect with the “investing or actively in the process of investing” requirement. Her comments did not create or change the “actively in the process of investing” alternative to investing the full amount prior to I-526 filing.  Partial investment remains an option that’s just as available, narrow, and risky as it has always been. For discussion, see Joey Barnett and Vivian Zhu’s article “EB-5 Minimum Investment Amount Increases to $900,000 November 21, 2019 – Can an EB-5 Applicant Invest Less Than the Full $500,000 Now and Still Qualify?” and Robert Divine’s article “Member Perspective: EB-5 Implications from IIUSA Conference Leading up to November 21 Effective Date of Regulations” (and his previous cautionary words about skeletal filings.) Personally, I would not file I-526 with less than $500,000 invested because USCIS makes it so tough on the business side to prove that funds not actually in the enterprise account still qualify as “at risk” in the enterprise, as required. For examples of petitioners who invested less than the minimum amount before I-526 filing, and specific problems that they faced, see: FEB012017_01B7203, Oct262009_01B7203, Apr162009_01B7203, Nov032008_01B7203, OCT072005_01B7203. The official policy is here in the policy manual.

In his presentation on October 29, 2019, Charles Oppenheim estimated EB-5 visa wait times for current investors from China, India, and Vietnam that are shorter than the wait times he had estimated back in April 2019. This reflects a reduced estimate of the total backlog of EB-5 applicants (visa applications+ estimated applicants associated with pending I-526). However, the number of investors in line for an EB-5 visa has likely not fallen since April 2019, considering the number of of I-526 filings and adjudications and visa issuances since then. Oppenheim’s total backlog estimate fell due to revised assumptions about the number of visas to eventually be claimed by those investors. Specifically, he’s now estimating fewer visa applicants associated with pending I-526, because he increased the I-526 denial rate assumption for all countries, and decreased the family size assumption for some countries. I’ll blog and spreadsheet the detail when IIUSA publishes the slides, which Oppenheim promised would include some data not in the conference presentation. But to the bottom line: Oppenheim’s revised estimates are mixed news.  Considering the surge of people starting the race, it’s worrisome to see Oppenheim looking at the finish line and estimating that a reduced number of people will make it to the end to claim a visa.  For EB-5 investors considering risks, they must assume (a) solid success rate with associated long wait times, or (b) shorter wait times predicated on high failure rate. It’s one or the other, considering demand. (B) is unfortunately plausible, considering IPO’s recent behavior, so I don’t necessarily question Oppenheim’s revised predictions with shorter wait times.

Filed under EB-5 Law & Policy, EB-5 Statistics, Updates from USCIS