Insights from pending EB-5 I-485 reports in FY2025 Q1

Last year, USCIS started publishing a valuable monthly report titled “Pending Applications for Employment-Based Preference Categories.” As explained on the AOS FAQ page, “The report provides our estimate of how many Forms I-485 we have in our inventory for each employment-based preference category, by selected country of chargeability, and by the month and year of the estimated priority date.”

I look to the pending I-485 reports for detail on the EB-5 inventory by TEA category, and for evidence of EB-5 processing movement. This post compares the EB-5 I-485 inventory report as of October 3, 2024 (the start of FY2025) with December 3, 2024 (the most recent report). I’m struck by the large number of applicants for reserved visas, by hints of I-526E processing progress by priority date, and by evidence that adjustment of status visas are not necessarily being issued in order by priority date.

Table 1 summarizes the USCIS report of EB-5 I-485 pending as of December 3, 2024. Note that the numbers represent every EB-5 applicant with a pending I-485, including applicants who can’t claim visas yet because the underlying I-526/I-526E has not yet been approved. The USCIS report has “D” in some cells to represent a redacted number less than 11; the figures in Table 1 assume that D=5 on average.

Table 1. EB-5 I-485 Pending as of December 3, 2024 (assumes “D”=5 on average)

Category	China	India	Rest of World	Total
High Unemployment	1,807	1,034	1,075	3,916
Rural	1,396	907	350	2,653
Infrastructure	15	15	40	70
Post-RIA Unreserved	–	15	179	194
Pre-RIA Unreserved	2,976	882	1,362	5,220
Total	6,194	2,853	3,006	12,053

In Table 1, I note that Infrastructure investors exist (despite not being recorded on FOIA reports of I-526E filings), and the numbers of high unemployment and rural applicants. If the pending high unemployment I-485 applicants could all get I-526E approval and qualify for visas this year (with 2,200 HU visas available), then we’d have high unemployment retrogression in the visa bulletin for all countries, including Rest of World countries – and that’s not even counting all the HU applicants coming up separately through consular processing.

The USCIS pending I-485 report uses one label for all Unreserved EB-5, but in Table 1 I divided the Unreserved applicants based on priority date into pre-RIA (through March 2022) and post-RIA (after March 2022). This highlights the fact that — so far — not many post-RIA applicants are requesting Unreserved visas.  This may change when ROW applicants who qualify for High Unemployment visas find themselves retrogressed in the crowded HU queue for only 10% of EB-5 visas, and opt to queue up instead behind the pre-RIA Unreserved ROW applicants going for 68% of EB-5 visas.

And now, on to more detailed tables that compare the December 3, 2024 report with the October 3, 2024 report. Looking at inventory changes, I can make some inferences about what happened with EB-5 processing in the first two months of FY2025.

Looking at changes to the Rural I-485 inventory between October and December, I can tell that USCIS has at least been adjudicating Rural I-526E with priority dates up to December 2023. (I-526E approval precedes I-485 approval.) I also note that the inventory isn’t being cleared FIFO in priority date order. Over a wide span of priority date months, we see a few I-485 being cleared while others in the same month get left untouched.  I will guess that this lack of FIFO discipline originates with I-526E processing, where order depends on I-956F timing and not just filing date. Mandamus actions may also play a role. I recently heard reports from investors with November 2023 and March 2024 priority dates who got I-485 approval in January 2025 – six months after I-526E approval, and two months after having Mandamus actions filed for their I-485.

Looking at changes to the High Unemployment I-485 inventory between October and December, I can’t tell that USCIS has moved much beyond 2022 priority dates with I-526E processing. Most HU I-485 visas issued so far this fiscal year were to 2022 PD, with just a handful 2023 and later PD getting visas so far. The delta column in each table doesn’t capture all processing activity, since it’s just the difference between additions and subtractions to the inventory by priority date month. But overall, I get the impression that I-485 approval numbers have been quite low so far this year for high unemployment, and not FIFO.

Changes to the Unreserved I-485 pending inventory likewise do not suggest a FIFO situation. What made those 15 Chinese I-485 applicants with April 2016 priority dates so lucky to be cleared, even as 50 others with priority dates in the same month and at least 337 other Chinese from previous months were left untouched? It’s possible that the change reflects withdrawal rather than approval, but still I wonder.

The pattern illustrates why we need to qualify EB-5 timing prediction for individual cases. A model can estimate how long it will take to issue visas to everyone with April 2016 priority dates, as a function of visas available and the total number of people waiting up to that date. But the model doesn’t know if Investor X will have the luck to be picked out earlier than others, or somehow left behind. At the same time, the pattern shows why we can’t conclude that backlogs have been cleared just because some recent priority dates are getting visas. Apparently two Indian applicants with December 2021 priority dates left the I-485 inventory recently – but that doesn’t erase over 500 Indian applicants with earlier priority dates whose I-485 are still pending.

I’m about to publish my best effort at a comprehensive analysis of the current EB-5 backlog and timing outlook, but wanted to first publish this article to highlight the key issue of order in visa processing.