Multiple readers asked me this question about the updated EB-5 backlog analysis I published last week. Why use 2025 as “Year 0” for Rural and High Unemployment visa issuance? Haven’t Rural and High Unemployment EB-5 visas been set aside every year since 2022? Why assume that almost no investors with priority dates since 2022 have visas yet? Is it right to estimate the pipeline visa backlog as of January 2025 as equal to nearly everyone who’s ever filed I-526E, plus their family members?
Unfortunately, TEA visa issuance is indeed only starting to pick up steam as of FY2025. The thousands of Rural and High Unemployment visas available in FY2022, FY2023, and FY2024 are now irrelevant to backlog calculations, because they were mostly not issued. (Indeed most TEA visas theoretically available in FY2025 are also on track to not be issued, but the carryover rule means that FY26 may provide another chance to issue FY25 TEA visas.) The following table summarizes my view of Rural and High Unemployment Visa issuance to date.
Actual FY22-FY23 Visas Issued
Estimated FY2024 Visas Issued via Consulates
Estimated FY2024 Visas Issued via AOS
Estimated FY2025 Visas Issued to date via Consulates (Oct 24-Mar 25)
Estimated FY2025 Visas Issued to date via AOS (Oct-Dec 2024)
Estimated Total TEA Visas Issued 2022 to early 2025
China Rural
0
6
91
31
80
208
India Rural
0
0
32
12
26
70
ROW Rural
0
3
2
244
18
267
Total Rural (RR, NR)
0
9
125
287
124
545
China HU
0
0
14
31
8
53
India HU
0
0
21
12
14
47
ROW HU
0
4
16
84
41
145
Total High Unemployment (RH, NH)
0
4
51
127
63
245
The numbers for FY2022 and FY2023 are actual, according to Annual Reports of the Visa Office. Figures for FY2024 and FY2025 to date are still estimates, since litigation has (reportedly) delayed publication of the 2024 Annual Report. We can estimate consular visa issuance since 2023 by summing up monthly data in the Monthly Immigrant Visa Issuance Statistics reports (currently available through March 2025). And it’s possible to roughly estimate adjustment of status visa issuance by comparing monthly reports for “Pending Applications for Employment-Based Preference Categories” (currently available to January 2025 on the USCIS Immigration and Citizenship Data page.) When the final numbers are published, I expect them to be higher than my estimates from the partial/preliminary reports, particularly for AOS. But the bottom line is clear: we are looking at 100s and not 1000s of Rural and High Unemployment visas issued to date. Which means that we do have to assume most Rural and High Unemployment investors since 2022 are still queued up waiting for visas.
Reserved visa issuance to date has been so low due to processing delay at USCIS and Department of State. People can’t get reserved visas until they can get visa interviews or I-485 processing, which in turn can’t happen until investor I-526/I-526E are approved, which in turn can’t happen until I-956F project applications are approved. With I-956Fs finally getting processed in volume in 2024, we’re starting to see more I-526E approvals and more visa issuance as of 2025. I’m including charts for USCIS processing and consular processing to date, and a table illustrating how monthly I-485 inventory reports can support a rough estimate of AOS visa issuance. For the most comprehensive available view of approval status of Rural and High Unemployment petitions, see the I-526E adjudication data by I-526E filing date and TEA category just published by AIIA “AIIA FOIA Series: Post RIA Petition Approval Statistics for January 2025” (May 16, 2025). As time permits I’ll publish an in-depth post on the USCIS and DOS operational factors that affect EB-5 timing, and prospects for forthcoming processing times. (I regret having more bad news to share about USCIS staffing and resource cuts at the Investor Program Office. And I wish I knew what was preventing consulates from scheduling post-RIA visa interviews for all qualified applicants.)
I’ve updated the Excel files linked to my EB-5 Timing Page. I fixed the first link (which for one day last week linked to an old analysis file instead of to the correct data collection file). And I added Progress and Visa Supply tabs to the EB-5 Backlog Analysis file to help clarify visa supply questions.
My previous analysis foresaw 2025 Rural and High Unemployment investors from China and India potentially getting visas from 2029 to the early 2030s — considering the backlog visibility in mid 2024, and hopes for high visa issuance in 2025.
What has changed? We now know that the pipeline backlog for Reserved visas has been rapidly expanded by new investors, while advancing more slowly than expected through USCIS processing. This adds up to more severe wait time outlook for China and India, which now have more people queued up for fewer visas available. My updated analysis highlights backlogs within each popular EB-5 lane (Unreserved, Rural, High Unemployment), and considers how switching between lanes could optimize visa availability. I also updated the model with a tool to model potential visa number wait times for a variety of priority dates.
The big picture of EB-5 demand shows approximately 60,000 people in the pipeline for visas available at a base rate of 10,000 per year. (“In the pipeline” means people associated with investors who started the EB-5 process by filing I-526/I-526E, and now somewhere in the process between petition filing and receiving a conditional green card.) The EB-5 demand picture is further complicated by multiple TEA and country categories, which affect which applicant could qualify for which visa.
Table 1 summarizes the estimated EB-5 backlog as of January 2025. This includes legacy EB-5 applicants who started the process before RIA passed in March 15, 2022, and now still waiting for Unreserved visas. And the backlog includes nearly all EB-5 applicants with priority dates since March 2022, because Rural and High Unemployment visa issuance is just now finally getting started as of FY2025.
Let’s start with a few incorrect ways to interpret Table 1 above. It’s easy to get confused by these factors: how country caps do and do not limit visa allocation, options for TEA investors to change lanes and choose Unreserved visas, how wait time estimates apply to a variety of priority dates, and whether or not investors born outside China or India need to worry about visa availability.
Incorrect Interpretation of Table 1
Correction
X — The Rural visa wait time is 4 years for a January 2025 investor, because by January there were 4x more pipeline Rural applicants than base annual Rural visas.
Correction — Consider country-specific visa allocation, not only total category supply and demand. The country cap limits affecting China and India EB-5 mean that the expected Rural visa wait would be much longer than 4 years for China and India, and less for applicants from ROW countries.
X — The visa wait time for the last China Unreserved investor is 64 years, because China Unreserved demand exceeds annual Unreserved visa supply under the 7% country cap by 64x.
Correction — The 7% country cap is a base, not a necessarily a ceiling, for high-demand countries. China has been able to count on getting many more than 7% of EB-5 visas because rest-of-world demand is normally never sufficient to use the maximum Unreserved visas available on a priority basis to ROW.
X — The visa wait time for a China Rural investor is 38 years, because China Rural demand exceeds annual Rural visa supply under the 7% country cap by 38x.
Correction — 38-year visa wait times would only be possible if demand continued to grow and all Rural investors ultimately claimed Rural visas. But this is unlikely — given that Rural investors also have access to Unreserved visas that will be available to China in much less than 38 years.
X — If I wasn’t born in China or India, there are no limits on the EB-5 visas available to me. I don’t need to worry about backlogs or retrogression.
Correction — Only China, India, Mexico, and the Philippines are subject to country-specific visa limits — but anyone can still run up against category limits. If 3,000+ High Unemployment Rest of World applicants request HU visas in a year with <1,000 HU visas available, then 2,000+ of those ROW applicants will be stopped by the Visa Bulletin and need to wait for a visa number. This scenario is on track to happen, given pipeline ROW demand for HU.
X — If I’m a Canada-born High Unemployment investor with January 2025 priority date, my visa wait time is 4 years, because ROW demand for High Unemployment visas exceeds maximum annual HU visa supply to ROW by 4x.
Correction — 4-year visa wait times for Rest of World High Unemployment investors would only be the reality if all HU investors ultimately claimed HU visas. But this is unlikely — given that HU investors also have the option to request Unreserved visas, and Unreserved will be available to ROW in less than 4 years.
X — If I’m a Canada-born Rural investor with January 2025 priority date, my visa wait time is 1 year, because all ROW Rural applicants could fit in one year of ROW Rural visa availability.
Correction — Regardless of visa supply, the Canada-born Rural investor will likely wait far longer than a year for a visa due to the separate issue of USCIS and consular processing delay. The real-life wait for a visa is the wait for a visa number (as a function of quota limits) or wait for USCIS/DOS processing (as a function of operational constraints), whichever proves longer.
X — If I’m an investor from China or India since January 2025, I have a chance to get an EB-5 visa in less than four years.
Correction — Considering every option to optimize visa availability across TEA categories and around country limits, I still see no clear path for a 2025 investor from China or India to get an EB-5 visa in less than four years. Except by lucky non-FIFO processing, or unless the as-yet undocumented Infrastructure category proves to have had low demand.
X — If I’m an investor from China or India in 2025, I’ll definitely qualify for an EB-5 visa sooner as a Rural investor than as a High Unemployment investor.
Correction — At some point, the expected wait for an Unreserved visa will be less than the wait for either a Rural or HU visa. When that point is reached, the initial choice between Rural or HU investment becomes less important because the investor may count on ultimately requesting an Unreserved visa regardless of where he invested. This point may already have been reached. (For China and India-born investors in 2025, Unreserved will almost certainly be available earlier than HU visas. Unreserved may or may not be available earlier than Rural visas depending on future Rural demand from ROW.)
X — There’s no demand or backlog yet for Infrastructure visas.
Correction — Infrastructure investors exist, according to anecdotal evidence. Table 1 is only blank for the Infrastructure category because USCIS hasn’t reported data for it yet.
X — Table 1 describes backlogs and wait times that apply to me, regardless of when I started the EB-5 process.
Correction — Table 1 gives a picture of the backlog as of one date – January 31, 2025 – and thus applies specifically to people whose priority date is 1/31/2025. Someone with an earlier priority date faces a shorter backlog/wait time, and someone with a later priority date faces a longer backlog/wait time.
X — Table 1 is not valid, because the Base Annual Visas line does not include extra carryover visas.
Rural and High Unemployment visa availability in 2022-2024 is not counted in the current backlog reduction calculation because — although technically available — those visas were not issued. Reserved visa issuance is getting started as of 2025, though still at a low volume despite high limit. I decided that simply counting base annual visas from 2025 can make sense, because the future above-base visas thanks to carryover may ultimately (approximately) counterbalance initial below-base visa issuance from this year due to processing delays.
(If you’d like a refresher on country caps and options for TEA investors to request Unreserved visas following I-526E approval, see Q5-Q14 from my Q&A published by CanAm last year.)
In revising my backlog analysis model, I tried to account for country caps, consider scope for visa allocation above country caps, account for the possibility of changing lanes between Reserved and Unreserved categories, model scenarios depending on whether applicants elect to change lanes, and then replicate all that for a variety of priority dates. Whew. Here’s a screenshot of summary projections for a January 31, 2025 priority date, showing the very different estimates that result depending on what assumptions one makes about future applicant behavior in choosing between Reserved and Unreserved visas.
Notes on the Scenarios:
“Scenario 1” shows the maximum potential impact of country cap limits. The estimated wait time is the number that results from simply dividing pipeline demand by base annual visa availability in each category. Scenario 1 shows the wait time if all applicants stayed in their TEA lanes, and if China and India were actually limited to 7% of visas in each lane. This scenario could theoretically come true for High Unemployment unless and until many HU investors start selecting Unreserved visas, because HU has enough ROW applicants to limit China and India to 7% long-term. It could come true for Rural if future ROW Rural demand increases, plus all Rural investors ultimately request Rural visas. But this scenario won’t come true in real life, because HU and Rural applicants are free to make the Unreserved switch if desired. And obviously no one’s really waiting 68 years for a visa.
“Scenario 2” models an unlikely but best-case scenario for China and India. What if 100% of Rest of World TEA investors switch to request Unreserved visas, leaving the entire Rural and High Unemployment visa allocations to be shared by China and India? In that case, China and India could get Rural and HU visas in FIFO order, without cap limits. Even in this best case, there could be a 4-year Rural visa wait and 7-year High Unemployment visa wait for January 2025 investors, based on the number of China and India-born applicants in the pipeline at that point compared with annual supply. And this case is unlikely to be fully realized, because ROW investors will (at least initially, before HU retrogression starts) lack personal motivation to request Unreserved visa allocation.
“Scenario 3” models the outlook for China and India Rural if ROW Rural investors do take Rural visas, but the number of ROW Rural investors never grows enough to take all of the Rural visas technically available to ROW. For Scenario 3, I noted that ROW Rural I-526E filings in CY2024 were only high enough to absorb about 70% of the annual base allocation available to ROW on a priority basis. So Scenario 3 shows the “what if” Rural applicants from China and India can count on their own 7% each of annual Rural visas plus 30% of the Rural visas available first to ROW. I consider Scenario 3 relatively realistic, especially for Chinese and Indian investors with early Rural priority dates – but not dependable, given that ROW demand has been trending up. There’s no Scenario 3 for High Unemployment, because ROW demand for High Unemployment already well exceeds maximum visas available to ROW.
“Scenario 4” gives the estimated visa number wait for a January 2025 Rural or High Unemployment investor who takes the first available Unreserved visa. The Scenario 4 estimate starts from quite pessimistic assumptions (about the longest I think the pre-RIA backlog could take to clear, the fewest Reserved visas issued in the meantime, and the most people jumping at an Unreserved switch.) But even with this pessimism, Scenario 4 might be the best visa timing hope for China and India-born investors with 2025 and later priority dates. At least, it’s a potential ceiling to keep in mind. For example as a January 2025 India-born investor looking at the above table, I’d be thinking “So my wait time for a visa number could theoretically be as long as 12 years or as short as 3.5 years in the Rural category, depending on behavior of other Rural investors – but in the worst case I should be able to fall back on the chance for an Unreserved visa in about 7 years.” (We may significantly revise Scenario 4 when the Department of State finally publishes the 2024 NVC Wait List and 2024 Annual Report. I’m told that these reports, which should’ve been published last month, are still pending due to litigation.)
Go ahead and download the EB-5 Backlog Analysis Excel file from the Timing Page to follow the data and formulas behind all these estimates, and to recalculate for different priority dates. You can also experiment with different family size assumptions. (Estimates for priority dates before January 2025 use a xlookup function with the table of historical monthly I-526E filing data. Estimates for dates since January incorporate a guess that future demand will replicate the CY2024 average — but you can change this assumption too if you like.) The model will have to be revised in the future when we get actual numbers after January. The model assumes steady monthly demand for prediction, but real-life demand fluctuation can end up making a huge difference in wait time for applicants with priority dates just weeks apart. If you notice any errors in my Excel, please email suzanne@lucidtext.com. I regularly edit the file as I find mistakes, get new data, or think of additional considerations.
I realize that the conclusions alone don’t look very helpful/actionable. (“My wait time could theoretically be between 4 and 38 years– what?”) And with so many moving parts and future assumptions involved, no one wait time estimate is firmly reliable. For example, the major question for all new China-born and India-born investors is how long it will take the legacy pre-RIA Unreserved backlog to clear. That time could prove years earlier than the pessimistic estimate in this model if on-going ROW Unreserved visa usage proves lower than I currently estimate based on recent trends, or if many legacy applicants recorded in old data reports have actually dropped out by now (or will). But even with the questionable conclusions, I hope that the step-by-step process and calculations that I laid out help to illuminate how wait-time-shaping factors work. And I hope that the bottom line is clear: EB-5 needs more visas.
Please join and donate to AIIA so that we can keep getting data to support ongoing analysis.
You’re invited to join me at a webinar that Carolyn Lee is hosting on May 30 at 2 ET: Latest EB-5 Numbers: What Do They Say About EB-5 Visa Backlog? This topic is so complicated that it’s easy to get lost in the weeds and lose a sense of urgency. I appreciate Carolyn’s efforts to keep EB-5 backlogs in focus as an urgent issue.
And a final caveat: my analysis has to assume FIFO order and average results. In my analysis, “wait for a January 31, 2025 priority date to get a visa” equals “time required for everyone pending in the same queue with PD before 1/31/2025 to get visas.” But real life is not quite FIFO, as illustrated in AIIA’s important new data release: AIIA FOIA Series: Post RIA Petition Approval Statistics for January 2025. The distribution of approvals in AIIA data shows that a few petitions are getting luckily picked out and processed earlier than others. The lucky few who reach the visa stage early/out of order have a chance to snag a visa before others with earlier priority dates, and before the date that would be calculated in my model.
I’m about to publish a serious post explaining my updated analysis of the EB-5 visa backlog and wait time situation. But while I labor over that presentation, I can’t help a quick reaction to two emails in my inbox today. One from Google Alerts, flagging the latest social media comments about the Trump Gold Card proposal. And another from the Academy of American Poets, saying they’ve been notified by the NEA of a grant terminated because “fostering public interest in poetry no longer aligns with the Administration’s agenda.” Okay then.
I haven’t talked much about the Gold Card proposal because Congress seems disinclined to make it legal. And surely President Trump as a champion of border sovereignty wouldn’t actually finalize an extralegal pathway to admission, with Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk in the role of coyotes, no matter what’s said on X. But I do worry that the ongoing Gold Card talk could tarnish EB-5, which is in the law, not for the ultra-wealthy, and a jobs program not a golden visa program. And being also a fan of American poetry, I enlisted AI to draft a Gold Card comment in the form of an homage to Walt Whitman.
ChatGPT, please write a poem in the style of Walt Whitman for the Trump Gold Card. The Gold Card is a proposed pathway for foreign nationals to gain admission to the United States in exchange for a $5 million cash payment facilitated by Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick. The Gold Card is different from EB-5, a form of legal immigration that does not sell green cards but requires investing in a business that creates jobs.
Certainly. Below is a poem in the style of Walt Whitman, evoking his grand, rolling cadence and expansive vision as it contemplates the Trump Gold Card in contrast to the traditional ideals of American immigration:
“I Sing the New Gate, Gleaming”
I sing the nation—its cities and vast rivers, its ports and fields, I sing the immigrant—her hands rough from labor, his eyes bright with the sweat of promise. But now I behold another vision: Not Ellis Island’s lantern, not the judge’s oath, nor the slow bloom of lawful toil— But a card—golden, shining, swift in passage.
Lo! What is this, with luster not from liberty but lucre? The Trump Gold Card! Brass-banded invitation to the banquet of the Republic, Price: five million and no questions asked.
By Elon the celestial dealer of dreams and rockets, By Lutnick the ledger-bearer of the high towers of finance— The gate swings open without a line, without the grind, No job promised, no child lifted, no sweat pressed into concrete.
This is no EB-5, that old contract of hope, Where green cards grew not from vaults but from vineyards, From startups in Detroit and factories in Fresno, From immigrants who gave and gave, and built what they would one day call home.
But the Gold Card? O America, whose flag once waved to masses yearning to breathe free, Do you now raise your arms only to the richest stranger?
I see them coming—not with papers or prayers, But with wire transfers, With yachts idling in the harbor of justice.
I do not scorn the foreigner, no— But I lament the barter of dignity, The bypass of law not for mercy but for millions.
O nation, you who once took pride in the forge, In the welder — Will you trade that fire for the glint of bullion?
Yet still I sing, because I must. For I see too the quiet ones who still arrive by EB-5, Whose feet kiss our soil Not as buyers, but as builders.
Let the Gold Card gleam, But let us ask what is gained—and what is lost— When a nation sells its doors.
EB-5 Updates 