Running ahead in the January 2024 Visa Bulletin

The January 2024 Visa Bulletin has holiday cheer for some EB-5 applicants, with final action date movement for Unreserved EB-5 to December 8, 2015 for China and to December 1, 2020 for India. I read this move as good news for all Chinese with pre-12/8/2015 priority dates, a lucky break or at least a nail-biting possibility for the 1,000 Indians with pre-12/2020 priority dates who fortuitously happen to be closest to visa interview/I-485 adjudication right now, and a blow to the 2,000+ Indians with pre-12/2020 priority dates who will watch others get visas while they remain mired in slow I-526 and visa processing.

I interpret visa bulletin movement against the background of I-526 filings by month, because that’s what VB dates represent: priority dates from people who started the process by filing I-526, and now signaled by filing date at the visa stage. When the VB moves final action dates from Date A to Date B to Date C, I count up the I-526 filed between those dates, look at visas issued and available, and think. (To assist everyone else in the same exercise, here’s my Excel with the needed data and example analysis.)

One could assume that a visa bulletin Final Action move from Date B to Date C means “Department of State must have finished issuing visas to priority dates between A and B, and must expect everyone  between B and C to get visas shortly.” With regard to the dates for filing, one assumption is “DOS must expect that the current filing date will become the final action date within a year.” To check those assumptions, I consult I-526 filing numbers. The interpretations are reasonable if expected visa applicants (I-526 principals less denials plus family) are plausibly consistent with recent visas issued and/or near-term visas available. If not, then we consider the alternate possible interpretation of visa bulletin movement: “A lot of people between Date A and Date C must be tied up in slow I-526 processing, and reaching the visa stage out of priority date order, with the result that some but not all priority dates up to C are documentarily qualified and may get visas shortly, while Date C will retrogress when the remaining applicants in those dates eventually become qualified. Meanwhile, the filing date must have been set to stimulate more qualified applicants but unlikely to become the final action date any time soon, considering how many applicants in the pipeline would qualify within the filing date movement.”

About 1,600 Indians filed I-526 between December 2018 and December 2020 (the India Visa Bulletin movement this year), and about 3,000 Chinese filed I-526 between October 1 and December 8, 2015 (the China VB movement). Adding assumptions about denial rates and family sizes, that could generate about 3,000 Indian visa applicants and at least 4,000 Chinese applicants. FY2024 has about 1,000 EB-5 unreserved visas available to India, and possibly up to 9,000 available to China. Against this background, it’s plausible that every Chinese with a pre-12/8/2015 priority date who still wants an EB-5 visa might possibly get one in FY2024. For India, evidently less than half of pre-12/1/2020 priority dates could possibly fit into this year’s visa availability, even if DOS had already cleared the backlog of pre-12/1/2018 Indian priority dates (which it can’t have done, considering the previous NVC waiting list and visa issuance, and dates on still-pending I-526). The difference between China and India is backlog location. Chinese with priority dates before 2016 are nearly all out of I-526 processing and thus on the visa bulletin radar, while many Indians with priority dates in 2019 and 2020 are still awaiting I-526 adjudication or not yet documentarily qualified (and thus not yet possible for the visa bulletin to consider).

If I’m an Indian with a November 2019 EB-5 priority date (one of the 745 Indians who filed I-526 in November 2019), how likely am I to get a visa this year? It depends on whether I happen to be already documentarily qualified at the visa stage now, and on I-526 processing volume and order for other Indians. Resorting again to a transit analogy, it’s like being passenger #20 on the standby list for a flight with 10 seats remaining to be allocated. If all 20 standby passengers were at the gate ready to board, I’d have no hope. But let’s say that only five passengers are at the gate, while the rest are caught up in traffic and security screening lines or decided to stay home or catch another flight.  The five already at the gate have a chance for seat assignment just because they’re on the spot, regardless of list priority – provided that not too many others on the list can eventually make it through security and come sprinting down the concourse in time to claim seats before the flight has to depart. There’s even some hope for the passenger #20 still currently stuck in security screening – if only he can count on unfair queue times advancing him while holding others back, such that only he and four other passengers will reach the gate in time for seat assignment. The situation can play out this way in EB-5, as low-volume and non-FIFO I-526 processing advances Indians to the visa stage in dribs and drabs, and out of priority date order, so that visa allocation can come joyfully earlier for some and sadly later for others than a FIFO calculation would anticipate. Meanwhile, the EB-5 context also has analogues to standby passengers who end up just staying home (giving up on immigration) or catching another flight (e.g. EB-1 or EB-2), thus relieving wait times for those who persist in trying to catch an EB-5 visa.

As further background and material for prediction, here is my estimate of the current size and location of the pipeline for unreserved EB-5 visas (assuming an average two visa applicants resulting from pending I-526, and guessing about country distribution of I-526 adjudicated since last year). I’ll be able to update the estimate once Department of State updates the NVC waiting list, and USCIS publishes more recent I-526 approval numbers.