Policy Manual Updates (Regional Center Penalties, Good Faith Investor Protections)

USCIS updated the EB-5 section of the USCIS Policy Manual today with substantive new content related to regional center penalties and investor protections. A Policy Alert on EB-5 Regional Center Noncompliance and Sanctions summarizes the update. (UPDATE: USCIS has also added a new section on “Retaining Eligibility” to EB-5 Questions and Answers (updated July 2024) on the EB-5 Resources page.)

Today’s policy update to the USCIS Policy Manual Volume 6 Part G adds a minor resource link to Chapter 2(C), edits terminology in Chapter 4(H)(2) and Chapter 5(E), and inserts major sections of new policy:

• “Special Considerations for Investors Who Filed Their Form I-526 Petitions Before March 15, 2022” in Chapter 3(E) Good Faith Investors Following Program Noncompliance by a Regional Center, New Commercial Enterprise, or Job-Creating Entity
• Chapter 8 – Sanctions and Discretionary Determinations

I sense the good work of the CIS Ombudsman behind the scenes of this policy update, which is relevant and responsive to live stakeholder questions — not simply regurgitating statue without interpretation or practical application. Regional centers may not be entirely happy with the sanctions policy, but it does go into admirable detail about how USCIS interprets the specific conditions and process for sanctioning Regional Centers, NCEs, and JCEs.  IIUSA has invited members to a webinar on July 18 at 12 ET to discuss the new policy guidance and how to deal with a recent spate of Notices of Intent to Terminate. Thankfully for investors, the pre-RIA investor protection policy newly-added to Chapter 3(E) is even more specific and generous than the interpretations described in the 2023 USCIS website Q&A, rewarding effort by AIIA as well as IIUSA and industry groups to convey investor questions and concerns through the Ombudsman. I will write in more detail about both policies. In the meantime, I am sharing my folder of all EB-5 Policy Manual iterations, and a redline version that I made using Word document comparison to show changes between today’s July 16, 2024 EB-5 policy and the previous version published October 26, 2023.