EB-5 Visa Status Report for 2023/2024

Fiscal Years 2023 and 2024 are good years for EB-5 visa availability, with mixed outlook for visa issuance.  I assess the picture by looking at EB-5 quota limits, EB-5 dates in the October 2023 Visa Bulletin and prior visa bulletins, I-526 filing trends associated with visa bulletin dates, the NVC waiting list, monthly visa issuance, and I-526 and I-526E processing trends. The picture that emerges from all this data shows winners and losers created primarily by the processing capacity of USCIS and Department of State. I begin with comments, followed by charts and tables. (9/29 UPDATE: This post has been revised to add monthly data for August 2023 and a revised FY2024 EB visa limit estimate.)

Winners in 2023/2024 EB-5 visa issuance

Win for unreserved EB-5 visa applicants generally

Department of State reports that “most” 2023 employment-based visas available were actually used in 2023 – making this the first year since 2019 without major EB visa loss. And 2024 could be an even better year for unreserved visa issuance, contingent on USCIS and DOS processing capacity. Unreserved EB-5 gets a windfall in 2024 of the 6,400 reserved EB-5 visas not used in 2022, on top of its regular 68% allocation of an unusually high EB-5 limit, for a total of over 14,000 unreserved visas available in FY2024. (See Table 1 below.) If only USCIS and consulates can manage to issue that many visas! Any unreserved FY2024 visas not used in FY2024 will be permanently lost to EB-5.

Win for unreserved visa applicants from India

India continues to be subject to country cap limits, but Mumbai has been issuing EB-5 visas aggressively and efficiently, and the adjustment of status process is working. As result, Indians have received as many as or more than the number of EB-5 visas technically available to Indians in 2022 and 2023 (see charts and tables below).

And the Visa Bulletin is being very generous to India. The October 2023 Visa Bulletin has already moved the India Final Action Date to December 15, 2018, from its pre-retrogression date of June 2018 – thus already releasing more Indian applicants for final action in 2024 than visas available to India in 2024, by my calculation. (My estimate considers the 773 I-526 filed by Indian investors from June 2018 to December 2018, and the about 1,000 unreserved EB-5 visas available in FY2024 under the country cap for investors plus family.) And even more generously, the October 2023 Visa Bulletin gives India EB-5 a Filing Date in April 2022. This allows all Indians in the queue for unreserved EB-5 visas to file I-485 and apply for advance parole and travel benefits — even though EB-5 green cards may not be available for post-2019 Indian priority dates until the end of the decade, absent a large number of dropouts from the current queue. (See my backlog data file for detail, or AIIA’s calculator tool.)

Wins for some unreserved visa applicants from China

Poor performance by many consulates worldwide has meant that rest-of-world EB-5 visa issuance has remained fairly low — below rest-of-world EB-5 demand. This failure benefits Chinese applicants by increasing the number of “otherwise unused” EB-5 visas left available for allocation to the oldest priority dates – i.e. to China-born applicants. EB-5 visa issuance to China in 2023 exceeded what I had expected looking at the waiting list from other countries. (See Table 2 below.) If only the Guangzhou consulate can keep up, the large number of unreserved EB-5 visas available in 2024 should significantly benefit the oldest Chinese priority dates. But it depends on the Guangzhou consulate managing unusually high-volume EB-5 interview scheduling this year.

Another mixed blessing comes from discriminatory policies resulting in high denial rates for Chinese I-526 and visa applications. As hundreds of Chinese keep falling out of the EB-5 backlog due to denials/revocations/withdrawals, those who do remain in the process keep advancing hundreds of spaces closer to getting a visa. The October 2023 Visa Bulletin advances the China EB-5 Date for Filing a whole year — from January 2016 (where the date had lingered since early 2020) to January 2017. This unprecedented large leap potentially allows at least 20,000 more Chinese EB-5 visa applications on the table – or so one would think, knowing that Chinese filed 10,450 I-526 petitions between January 2016 and December 2016. But Department of State must be counting on a large percentage of those 10,450 Chinese EB-5 investors who started in 2016 having subsequently dropped out, or lost their spouses and children, such that their actual visa applications won’t in practice overwhelm the near-term visas available to China. (Depending on rest-of-world visa issuance and Guangzhou capacity, China could get at most up to 10,000 EB-5 visas in 2024.)

Win for a fraction of reserved EB-5 visa applicants

USCIS has recently approved some I-526E, both for rural and high-unemployment projects. Not 100s or 1000s of approvals from what I’ve heard, but at least multiples of 10. USCIS is under pressure to show they are implementing the new law, so they have to adjudicate at least some I-526E instead of just leaving them to wait fairly behind the older I-526 backlog. I’m sure that USCIS can’t possibly manage the 3,000 or so I-526E approvals that would be needed very soon to use the 8,000+ reserve visas available in 2024 (if indeed that many I-526E have even been filed yet). But it’s going to be great for the portion of I-526E petitions that do get approved and advanced in 2024 – they’ll be swimming in visa availability. I-526E that remain pending in 2024 will face narrower visa availability when they reach the visa stage in future years.

Losers in 2023/2024 EB-5 visa issuance

Losses for EB-5 applicants from Vietnam, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Other Countries

Due to USCIS and DOS processing issues, actual EB-5 visa issuance has been lower than demand for many countries with no country cap limit. The National Visa Center had over 5,000 EB-5 applicants registered in November 2022 from countries other than China and India (the only countries with a country cap limit for EB-5). And yet by the end of August 2023, DOS had issued fewer than 3,000 EB-5 visas to those rest-of-world applicants. What’s your EB-5 problem, consulates? You had over 5,000+ EB-5 visas available in 2023 that could’ve gone to those 5,000+ applicants – why not allocate them? (And the problem does seem to be EB-5-specific, since consulates performed pretty consistently overall in 2023 across IV categories.)

Applicants from Hong Kong received fewer than 100 EB-5 visas in 2023 even though over 600 Hong Kong EB-5 applicants were registered and waiting at NVC. What’s the excuse? Why did Ho Chi Minh City issue only 527 EB-5 visas in the first 11 months of 2023, although the year started with over 1,500 Vietnamese registered at NVC (and no country cap limit for Vietnam this year per the Visa Bulletin)? Why do the monthly visa issuance statistics show that many consulates only got going with EB-5 interviews near the end of the year, instead of working consistently throughout the year as they’re supposed to do (or instead of working aggressively at the beginning of the year, as Mumbai did)? In particular, consulates in Seoul, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, and Bogota did little EB-5 work the start of 2023. Let’s not repeat this pattern in 2024.

There’s a non-trivial risk that unreserved EB-5 could have Visa Bulletin cut-off dates for every single country (as is the case for EB-1 to EB-4) in 2025 or 2026. This could happen if DOS continues to let rest-of-world visa demand pile up from year to year while USCIS keeps adding to the NVC waiting list by approving I-526 from a variety of countries. The investor association AIIA has consular processing problems on its agenda, and we should support efforts to investigate and address this important problem area.

Losses for EB-5 investors who can’t get I-526 or I-526E approval shortly

The Investor Program Office has significantly increased I-526 processing volume in recent months (see my regularly-updated Processing Data page), so I have some hope for visa issuance in 2024. But this great trend must continue and escalate, because 2024 visa availability is only good for qualified visa applicants. People with I-526 or I-526E pending can’t move. The charts on my processing data page reflect the chaotic nature of I-526 processing activity, with some recent cases adjudicated while other older cases get left pending for unknown reasons. The longer I-526 and I-526E remain pending, the more they risk limited visa availability and visa-stage crowds once they finally do reach the visa stage. We depend on you, IPO, to keep increasing processing volume so that EB-5 visas can get issued before they’re lost!

Table 1. EB-5 Visa Availability

EB-5 Visas Available			FY2023	FY2024
A	Base EB-5 Allocation (=7.1% of annual EB)		13,993	11,715*
Unreserved EB-5 Visas Available			FY2023	FY2024
B	Base Allocation for Unreserved (=68% of A)		9,516	7,966
C	Carryover Unused Reserve (from 2 years previous)		0	6,396
D	Total Unreserved Visas Available (=B+C)		9,516	14,362
E	Total available under Country Cap (=D*7%)		666	1,005
F	Average visas available per month (=B/12)		793	1,197
G	Average visas per country per month (=E/12)		56	84
Reserved EB-5 Visas Available			FY2023	FY2024
H	Base Allocation for Reserved (=32% of A)		4,478	3,749
I	Carryover Unused Reserve (from previous year)		6,396	4,478
J	Total Reserved Visas Available (=H+I)		10,874	8,227
Visas Issued			FY2023	FY2024
K	Unreserved Visas Issued		9,516 (estimate)	TBD
L	Reserved Visas Issued		0 (estimate)	TBD
Visas Lost			FY2023	FY2024
M	Unreserved Visas Lost (rolled up to EB-1/EB-2)		0 (estimate)	TBD
N	Reserved Visas Lost (carried over to unreserve)		6,396 (estimate)	TBD

Table 2. FY2023EB-5 Unreserved Visa Issuance through Consular Processing

Country of chargeability	Total EB-5 Applicants Registered at NVC as of November 2022	Actual EB-5 Visa Issuance Through Consular Processing October 2022 to August 2023*
China – mainland born	38,874	5,627
India	1,362	676
Vietnam	1,534	527
Korea, South	560	407
Hong Kong S.A.R.	688	85
All Others	2,480	1,034
Total	45,498	8,356

Posts like this take so much time to research and write, and yet can still only answer a fraction of the questions that you may have. I am available to provide additional data and more detailed explanation, and to address individual questions. Just email me at suzanne@lucidtext.com to schedule a paid consultation. I have also made data available on the EB5 Timing and Processing Data pages. For visa wait time predictions, note that AIIA has combined my data library with their FOIA data and created an automated Pre-RIA Visa Wait Time Calculator. The AIIA tool is nice because it’s built around a core of known fact — how many EB-5 investors per country started the EB-5 process by filing I-526 — and then allows the user add assumptions about unknown visa-demand variables such as future family size and denial rates. Note also that IIUSA has a nice article on the topic of FY2023 consular processing, including comparison with previous years: IIUSA Data Analysis: EB-5 Visa Issuance Monthly Data Updates for FY2023 (September 2022 – July 2023).