FY2025 Visa Limit Announced
December 23, 2024 15 Comments
Department of State has just updated the Immigrant Visa Statistics page with Annual Numerical Limits for Fiscal Year 2025. As expected, there are an estimated 150,000 total EB visas available for FY2025 (only slightly above the 140,000 baseline, as consular operations have mostly recovered from the Pandemic). EB-5 gets 7.1% of new EB visas, or about 10,650 in FY2025, plus carryover visas.
According to EB-5 carryover rules, the FY2025 Reserved limit will be increased by Reserved visas that were newly-issued but not used in FY2024, while the Unreserved limit will be increased by Reserved visas that were newly-issued in FY2023 and then not used in 2023 or 2024. Here’s how I calculate the FY2025 total including carryovers.
We’ll have our eyes particularly on the approximately 4,400 Rural Visas and approximately 2,200 High Unemployment visas available this year. The race is on for USCIS to approve enough of the 3,000+ pending Rural I-526E and 4,000+ pending High Unemployment I-526E to generate applicants for this year’s visas. See also my post on the latest Q4 adjudication numbers and receipt data and my analysis of family sizes in EB-5. (These important new articles were inadvertently not emailed out upon publication).
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Hi Suzanne ,PD -5 January 2022 Country of chargeability- India , Still waiting for adjudication of I 526 petition.
for unreserved India I-526 for March 2022.
any time estimate for processing?
it’s been stuck on Jan 2022 & April 2022 for almost year now.
Hi Suzanne,
My PD is March 2022. We received an RFE on our I-526, responded to it and subsequently received an approval (within a month of USCIS receiving our response) in December 2024.
When can we expect our pending I-485 to be adjudicated? Do you have any estimates based on trends in the industry? Our PD is current (probably not for long though). Unreserved category.
Hi EB Investor,
I have same, my PD was 2nd week March 2022, got RFE in 2nd week Aug 2024, responded in last week Oct 2024. Response received online case update in 1st week of Nov, 2024. Now just waiting.
Country is India
Question is what is your timelines?
2nd which country.
Just to help everyone, I had downloaded data from USCIS for Nov, 2024.
India unreserved EB-5 (legacy) upto March 2022 pending visa is 171 (or about 3×171= approx 500 visas)
Stuck in Jan, 2022 from last few months, it currently shows less than 10 left to process for Jan 2022, and about 161 applications left for Feb & March. By this time of writing, we should be halfway into Feb, 2022 for processing. But March 2022 may take several months.
Maybe Suzanne, can better analize & provide guidance for Legacy application for India.
As of Feb 2025, there’s is no movement. Filing date stuck for over 2 yrs & over 5 months for final date for India. Hope this helps.
It does not look very rosy, approval rates are very low.
Which site is this can you please share name
My pd Nov 2019 waiting for 485 June 2022
7 month after -526 approved
Hi All
I have the same PD in March 2022, and I received my RFE in July 2024. Responded in October 2024.
If Suzanne agrees, we can make a page to share our status updates and this way we can estimate how many more months we should wait.
I can assist you that.
Warning signs: After Trump took over, the processing down to 1 case per day. I have been monitoring daily & I see the drop. Due to this we are already down to 50% cases processed for I-526 this month compare to last month. At this rate expect I-526 to take 10-12 years just for approval part. Expect huge backlog building up for next 4 years, its part of project 2025, which is to slow down or halt legal immigration as well.
Hi Ram – I am considering applying for an EB5 visa and expect to file by mid-Mar. Which category would be most prudent to target – rural or high-unemployment?
If you are concerned about timing, the key difference between urban and rural come down to visa numbers. As of July 2024 according to FOIA data, there were 6,309 rural investors and 8,742 high unemployment investors in line. Add an estimated number of spouses and children to those investor numbers, and then divide by 2,000 for rural and 1,000 for high unemployment to get a sense of the backlog size in years. (Due to country caps, actual wait times will be longer for China and India and shorter than ROW than this rough estimate.)
Hi Suzanne,
The number of investors in rural category was 2809, and HU was 3995 till end of July 2024. Are your numbers already adding the spouses and children?
We also have a higher number of visas available for 2025. Could that move things along a little faster?
Yes: my rough estimate of future applicants = investors*2, reflecting the addition of spouses and children and some attrition from denials. My wait time estimates divide total applicants by base annual visa availability, but then I subtract 1 from the result to account for the fact that one year (hopefully 2025!) will have about the double the number of base visas issued thanks to carryovers. The extra visas available this year also affect my estimates because I think they could prevent country caps from taking effect until year-end, meaning that a relatively large number of Chinese and Indians can expect visas in 2025.
I think for India rural would be the best. Its longer payout, but much quicker processing. Also if you doing adjustment of status inside US. You should get ready, backlog could happen anytime now.
Jan, 2025 Visa Bulletin:
E. VISA AVAILABILIY IN THE EMPLOYMENT FIFTH PREFERENCE (EB-5) SET ASIDE CATEGORIES
The Department of State and USCIS note increased I-526E petition approvals, and both agencies see increasing numbers of individuals processing their applications to completion in the EB-5 set aside categories. It may become necessary to establish Dates for Filing and Final Action Dates during the fiscal year to ensure that issuances in these categories do not exceed annual limits. This situation will be continually monitored, and any necessary adjustments will be made accordingly.
High Unemployment is shorter payback, but longer I-526 processing.
Rural is long payback, but shorter processing.
Likely High Unemployment will go into backlog anytime for India & China, but Rural may have few months left as well.
Hope this helps.
@Suzanne
Any new data/post since Dec 2024?