I-526/I-526E data by TEA and country through early 2024

As I prepared Monday’s post on the Visa Bulletin, I looked at the number 9,158. This number represents 9,158 Chinese investors plus family who contributed at least $500,000 per family in 2014/2015 for the chance to qualify for an EB-5 visa. The Visa Bulletin showed “C” – no restriction – for China EB-5 through 2014 into the first half of 2015 (only beginning to establish cut-off dates in May 2015, and even then only implying a two-year wait with a 2013 date). How many of those people realized that they’d still be here a decade later, visa-less, a statistic on the 2024 NVC waiting list? Visa availability problems were predictable in retrospect, considering the 25,000 I-526 filed in 2014/2015, but we didn’t talk much about pipeline visa demand in those days. In honor of everyone taken sadly by surprise, and hoping not to repeat that history, we are more careful now to track and report not only the visa-stage demand reported in the visa bulletin, but also on pipeline demand coming up from I-526/I-526E filings.

I’m happy to report another important addition to the treasury of I-526/I-526E receipt data, with detail on visa category and petitioner county as needed for visa pipeline analysis. This dataset is courtesy of the efficient Joey Barnett of WR Immigration, who managed to extract a record-quick Freedom of Information Act response from USCIS, and immediately and generously made the full record available to the public. The data is published in a blog post here: “Exclusive New EB-5 Filing Data on Rural v. High Unemployment Area Demand as of April 2024!” You’re invited to join Joey Barnett and Charlie Oppenheim in discussing the data during the next edition of The Bulletin – Chatting with Charlie: EB-5 Investor Outlook on September 26, 2024.

Prior to the WR Immigration FOIA request, the most recent publicly-available TEA-and-country-specific data was from AIIA FOIA Series: Updated I-526E Inventory Statistics for 2023. The AIIA FOIA data was monthly through the end of 2023, and highlighted a handful of high-demand countries. The WR Immigration FOIA data is annual, but extends through the first part of 2024 and lists results for every single petitioner country.

The comprehensive county-specific detail in the WR Immigration FOIA provides interesting material for the question “where are regional centers finding EB-5 investors these days?” I see that AIIA already has a post up from this angle.  

For backlog analysis, the WR Immigration FOIA is critical because it covers at least part of the great filing surge of Q2 2024, when 1,879 I-526 and I-526E were filed. We’ve needed to know where those 1,879 people came from, and where they invested, to help get a handle on potential TEA and country-specific backlogs. And now we have more information about it.

It’s tricky to date FOIA responses, because USCIS only reports the date that they queried the database, leaving us to guess how up-to-date the database was at that point. The WR Immigration FOIA is dated as of April 18, 2024. Comparing the FOIA totals with the totals that USCIS ended up officially reporting, we can conclude that the WR Immigration FOIA report captures cases filed through about February/mid-March 2024.

I’ll let charts tell the story of what happened during the recorded part of the March 2024 filing surge, including how Rural demand surged ahead for the first time (particularly thanks to China), while High Unemployment demand dipped but remained sufficiently strong to continue to dominate the cumulative inventory. (The charts combine AIIA’s FOIA data for 2022-2023 with WR Immigration’s FOIA for 2024.)

And finally, here’s the table that highlights my concern in the data: what’s going to happen to these data points when they’re people with families approaching the visa window?

For a rough estimate of future visa demand from the I-526 pipeline, I conservatively multiply the I-526 receipts by 2. This underestimates typical family sizes, but considers the possibility of denials and other attrition. And then I look at estimated cumulative visa demand and future visa supply and think about the balance.

FY2025 is carryover year, with extra visas available. What would happen in the best-processing case/worst-visa-case scenario that the entire pipeline of investors filing I-526 up to March 2024 reached the visa stage in FY2025? Looking at the numbers, I see that they would find enough rural but not enough high unemployment visas to accommodate them. In that case, FY2025 would end with Visa Bulletin cut-off dates for high unemployment, and a backlog going into FY2026 without the promise of carryover from unused HU visas.  In real life, slow I-526E processing looks likely to continue to slow-walk the backlog (as it has been slow-walked to date) such that FY2025 doesn’t get sufficient applicants to max out FY2025 visas. In that case, the visa bulletin would not move yet in FY2025, and FY2026 would also have extra visas. In that case, the pipeline that had built by early 2024 would be getting visas in 2026 and years beyond.

If I were an investor from China or India, I would look not only at the China or India pipeline, but also at ROW (meaning applicants from the “rest of world”). ROW is important, because the number of annual visas available to me, as an applicant subject to country cap, is equal to 7% PLUS a share of any visas not absorbed by ROW. Every one ROW visa issued is one fewer visa that might be available to my country over the country cap. The ROW pipeline is also a target for people wondering if it’s possible to diffuse demand pressure from TEA set-aside categories. (But notice that High Unemployment shows enough demand from China and India alone to absorb 2+ years of visas even if they were the only applicants, even if 100% of the documented ROW HU pipeline left the HU category and chose to receive Unreserved visas instead.)

Still have questions about what the numbers mean? Note that the FAQ I just finished addresses topics such as which countries are affected by country cap limits and retrogression, how applicants may choose a TEA or Unreserved category, and how annual EB-5 visa availability gets calculated.

FY2024 Q3 EB-5 Form Processing Data

The USCIS Immigration and Citizenship Data page has published performance data for FY2024 Q3 (April 1, 2024 to June 30, 2024), including for EB-5 forms I-526, I-526E, I-829, and the various form I-956s. I regularly consult the All USCIS Application and Petition Form Types  report, the Net Backlog and Frontlog  report, and the Approved EB Petitions Awaiting Visa Final Priority Dates report.

FY2024 Q3 data shows minimal movement for post-RIA I-526/I-526E petitions, and continuing high processing volume and backlog reduction for pre-RIA I-526 and I-829. Receipts fell in Q3, especially for I-526E, but not as much as I expected after the April 1 USCIS form fee increase.

USCIS has worked aggressively in 2024 to clear the inventory of pending pre-RIA forms. By June, USCIS was down to a net backlog of only 100 I-526 petitions, and had reduced the I-829 net backlog to 5,000. (“Net Backlog is Gross Backlog minus any customer induced delays (i.e. RFE, intent to deny, etc.) and visa unavailable cases.”) It is likely that as of today, USCIS has already at least assigned nearly every pre-RIA I-526, except for I-526 from Chinese investors who don’t have visas available. If recent volumes continue, every I-526 and I-829 pending today will have been processed before June 2025. Kudos to IPO staff and Chief Alissa Emmel for making this happen! Meanwhile FY2025 visa bulletins will be interesting, as Department of State works to match FY25 visas to the influx of new Unreserved applicants from I-526 approvals.

Processing activity for post-RIA investor petitions picked up slightly in Q3, but is still extremely low in context of the I-526E backlog and the number of reserved visas waiting for applicants. Two factors give me hope for a major boost to I-526E processing numbers coming soon: the uptick in I-956F processing in Q3 (with I-956F approval being precursor to I-526E approval), and the fact that the disappearance of the I-526 backlog is about to free up major adjudicator capacity that might be moved to I-526E processing. USCIS processed nearly 6,000 I-526 in the past 12 months, and such productivity would quickly decimate the I-526E backlog. I’m optimistic that USCIS/Department of State will at least be able to issue all Reserved visas available in FY2026, considering the processing potential. However, low processing volumes to date may mean that some FY2025 Reserved visas will go unissued for lack of qualified applicants advanced in time.

And a few other points of interest. Both I-526 and I-829 denial rates were down in Q3, to 25% and 5% respectively. A handful of I-526E denials were reported for the first time in Q3 — and I expect to see more soon, considering that USCIS denied 25 I-956F project applications so far this year. The number of I-956 regional center application filings hardly dropped in Q3, despite the massive filing fee increase. And apparently USCIS approved one I-924 in Q3. Mysterious!

I’ve copied below charts to highlight salient features and trends, as well as updating my Processing Data page and Key EB5 Backlog Data excel file. And heads-up for additional data and analysis coming in the next few weeks.

• USCIS still does not report I-526E processing times, but IIUSA has stepped into the gap and worked with regional centers to collect and analyze a large database of anecdotal evidence for actual I-526E and I-956F processing times. I’ve been assisting Lee Li with this important project, and look forward to the results to be released shortly. You’re invited to join us for a webinar on October 2, 2024 on “New Data and Emerging Trends: I-526/I-526E Filings, Adjudications, and Processing Times”
• AIIA continues the critical effort to extract information from USCIS on the breakdown of post-RIA I-526 and I-526E filings by TEA category and applicant country of birth, to help keep a pulse on potential visa backlogs. They hope for a response next month to the FOIA request covering the filing surge in January to March 2024. (Currently, we only have data through December 2023.)
• I’ve been working on a major project to research and write FAQ covering questions about EB-5 visa availability and allocation. The 26 short articles that comprise this project will be published next week – look for an announcement and links here next week Tuesday.

On the visa front, Department of State announced that it succeeded in issuing all EB-5 Unreserved visas available for FY2024 – good news for pre-RIA investors, and particularly for long-suffering Chinese investors who were able to pick up a large number of FY24 visas thanks to the productive consulate in Guangzhou.  I will write separately about the visa outlook for FY2025 (which is unfortunately currently subject to litigation, as discussed by IIUSA and AIIA).

FY2024 Q2 (January-March 2024) EB-5 Form Data Update

Today USCIS published form receipt and processing data for FY2024 Q2 (January to March 2024) on the USCIS Immigration and Citizenship Data page. I’ve updated my Processing Data page with all the FY24 Q2 EB-5 numbers, and provide charts in this post to highlight the big news.

New EB-5 filings skyrocketed in January to March 2024. Meanwhile, IPO took a large bite out of the EB-5 backlog with impressive productivity that recalls the good old days of 2018. We’re setting up for a busy and crowded time at the EB-5 visa windows in 2025 and beyond.  (In other news, I’ve also updated my data repository with key visa-stage EB-5 numbers shared by Department of State at the IIUSA conference last month, to be discussed further in forthcoming articles. See IIUSA’s conference slides and a nice follow-up analysis by Lee Li that gives further detail and clarification.)

Post-RIA I-526 and I-526E Receipt Trend

USCIS reports that a whopping 1,810 I-526E and 69 I-526 were filed last quarter.

Counting up the quarterly reports from April 2022 (following the passage of RIA) to March 2024, we can see that USCIS has reported a cumulative total  5,344 post-RIA I-526 and I-526E filed, and 429 processed. (As a side note, the cumulative count conflicts with the FY24 Q2 period-end pending count. In the past, I’ve noted that the pending number ends up skewed after filing surges – I guess because last-minute end-of period receipts get counted as receipts in the period but only added to pending in the next period.)

In context, since RIA passed two years ago, EB-5 investors have brought at least 5,344*$800,000=$4.275 billion dollars into the U.S. economy. This investment was incentivized by the hope that approximately 5,344/.35=15,000ish visas will be available to these investors plus their spouses and children. (35% is an historical average of principals in EB-5 visas issued.) The number of post-RIA applicants who actually make it to an EB-5 visa will likely be significantly smaller due to country-specific variation and attrition, but the size of the upfront hope is impressive and sobering. Congress has not set aside sufficient annual visa numbers for this level of willingness to invest in economic growth and job creation. We don’t yet know how all I-526E filings break down by country or TEA category (AIIA has another FOIA request in progress for numbers since since November 2023), but this is a lot of prospective EB-5 visa applicants to fit in any lane, including Unreserved given the pre-RIA backlog. EB-5 visa advocacy should already be an urgent priority.

IPO Processing Productivity

As I’ve been reporting based on unofficially obtained data, IPO has made a quantum leap in processing productivity.  The first chart illustrates recent processing volume in historical context. The second chart compares FY24 Q4 processing productivity against the size of the backlog for select EB-5 forms. If IPO keeps processing at this rate, the pre-RIA I-526 and I-829 backlogs at USCIS will be gone within 12 months. And then adjudicators currently proving ability to turn out thousands of decisions per quarter will be able to shift focus and make quick work of the post-RIA inventory and incoming receipts. IPO still hasn’t published the RIA-required timely processing fee study, but even better it has gotten on track to actually realize the RIA timely processing goals in the foreseeable future.

Good news for I-526 and I-829 processing

And finally, I get to report good news! The Investor Program Office seems to be turning a corner with petition processing. Official results aren’t out yet for months since September 2023, but preliminary data for recent pre-RIA I-526 and I-829 completions show the continuation of an encouraging trend. We’re hearing anecdotally about timely post-RIA I-526 and I-526E adjudications as well. Kudos to USCIS Director Jaddou and IPO Chief Emmel, who promised the improvements that we’re now seeing realized. As processing volume significantly increases, processing times have a chance to come down. For detailed analysis of what’s changed behind the scenes with I-526 and I-829 processing, and implications for processing times going forward, see my article “Recovery for EB-5 processing times” guest published on the Houston EB-5 blog. I have a pipeline of articles in process for industry colleagues, and will link here as time permits for publication. I also regularly update the Processing Data page on this blog.

Sensitivity analysis for set-aside visa backlog questions

A couple weeks ago AIIA published the results of a Freedom of Information Act request showing that as of the end of 2023, at least 1,093 rural investors and 2,185 high unemployment investors had filed EB-5 petitions with USCIS. (See the AIIA post for the data and link to an extensive webinar.) Now there’s the battle of interpreting and forecasting from those numbers. What will happen when those investors from 2022/2023, together with their spouses and children, encounter visa availability that’s about 4,000 in the first year and 2,000 in subsequent years for rural, and 2,000 in the first year 1,000 in subsequent years for high unemployment (with further limits from country caps once total visa-stage demand exceeds total supply)? How bad or not-bad-at-all could the backlog situation possibly be for rural and for high unemployment set-asides, considering the scope for variation in assumptions about final visa demand and future visa supply? I think the best industry analysis so far is from IIUSA, which just put out a report by Lee Li “Calculating Demand and Supply for Reserved EB-5 Visa Numbers: Data, Factors, Knowns, Unknows, and Estimates.” I like Lee’s analysis because it doesn’t imply only one possible conclusion from the I-526E data and also doesn’t just say “there’s uncertainty in the variables” and then stop, as if implying that any uncertainty means “so don’t bother thinking about this, you can’t and shouldn’t try to account for this, there are no reasoned conclusions to be drawn, really anything could be possible, believe whatever you/I want you to believe.” Instead, Lee’s analysis models a way to take uncertainty in hand and consider a reasonable range of probability by modeling scenarios. Lee’s analysis focuses on the I-526E inventory as of the end of 2023. We can use the same approach to run scenarios for the possible situation as of today, as exacerbated by another four months of I-526E filings. (To facilitate projections, I recommend getting AIIA’s detailed report of filings by month.)

So long as I’m recommending articles, I’d also like to mention David Bier’s illuminating paper “Green Card Approval Rate Reaches Record Lows” (February 15, 2024). The article isn’t specific to EB-5, but a reminder of demand/supply imbalance issues throughout the immigration system. The charts and graphs alone are excellent and thought-provoking, and I much appreciate his analysis and conclusions.

What the Report of the Visa Office 2023 shows about unreserved EB-5 backlog status for China, India, and ROW

The Department of State has published its Report of the Visa Office 2023, including the final tally of EB-5 visas issued by country through consular processing and adjustment of status in FY2023.

The visa office report can be examined as an indicator of market interest in EB-5 visas, showing the countries of origin for EB-5 applicants in the last year, whether those applicants were already residing in the U.S. (thus adjusting status) or located abroad (getting visas through consulates), whether the applicants invested in regional center or direct projects, and whether the applicants chose Targeted Employment Area investments.  At the very end of this post, you’ll find the tables I typically make to summarize visa office report data relevant to EB-5 market demand. Spoiler: EB-5 visas are still overwhelmingly going to applicants in Asia based on investment in regional center legacy TEA projects. (In FY2023, Department of State was not able to issue any set-aside TEA visas.)

But first, I’ve prepared tables based on my primary interest: what the visa office report tells us about visa backlog status for China, India, and Rest of the World countries. For my first chart, I take FY2023 EB-5 visa issuance numbers and put them in context of the 11/2022 NVC wait list (which shows how many EB-5 applicants were registered and waiting at the National Visa Center at the start of the fiscal year), and FY2023 visa availability (which shows how many EB-5 visas could/should have been issued under numerical limits during the fiscal year).

The good news for everyone: visa issuance in FY2023 met and even slightly exceeded the EB-5 annual limit (at least for unreserved) for the first time since 2017! No unreserved EB-5 visas wasted!

Good news for India and China. DOS did not limit India to 7% of unreserved visas in FY2023, but allowed nearly 7% of total EB-5 visas. China was allocated thousands more visas in FY2023 than one might have expected given the number of “rest of the world” applicants waiting for visas. On the other hand, Chinese and Indians should note the difference between applicants who were registered at NVC in late 2022, and consular visas issued in 2023. The difference equals the number of applicants who were already waiting in 2022 and apparently still waiting a year later: a difference that gives a reality check for interpreting the visa bulletin. Realizing that 731 Indians who registered at NVC in 2022 or earlier still didn’t have visas in late 2023, we know that the inventory of pre-2020 Indian priority dates can’t be clear, regardless of visa bulletin dates, unless denial rates were extremely high. I’ll be interested to see the NVC wait list as of 11/2023, which should be published shortly.

I’m most concerned looking at the visa issuance numbers for countries other than China and India, which are not limited by country caps and yet left many applicants behind. (As DOS clarified in 2023, country caps only limit the short list of countries that exceed 7% across all EB+FB categories. China and India are the only countries that are both high demand in EB-5 and also high demand across all visa categories. But countries without the individual 7% limit can still run up against constraints.) Of the more than 5,000 Rest of World EB-5 applicants registered at the National Visa Center in late 2022, over 3,000 didn’t get visas in FY2023. Those applicants weren’t constrained by anything in FY2023 except consular capacity to schedule interviews; technically 3,000 visas could have gone to them in FY2023 instead of being considered “otherwise unused” and assigned to China over China’s country cap. (Unless denials account for a significant part of the gap, but the consular EB-5 denial rate is historically not very high — averaging 9% in 2016-2021.) DOS apparently left many ROW applicants to wait in a small backlog, which I foresee is about to become a large backlog as USCIS is finally aggressively approving I-526 and advancing thousands more ROW applicants to the visa stage. (Another post on this coming soon – the latest I-526 and I-829 processing numbers are excellent.) Backlogs can be a wait time issue even for countries not subject to country caps, as you know by looking at any visa bulletin and seeing the final action dates for ROW in EB-2, EB-3, and EB-4. The backlog tipping point in EB-5 for “rest of the world” countries will come when ROW applicants for unreserved visas collectively exceed 86% of unreserved visas available – i.e. when ROW unreserved reaches about 6,000 applicants. (Logic: Chinese and Indian unreserved applicants have older priority dates than most ROW applicants, so Chinese and Indians will get allocated EB-5 visas first up to the 7% cap for each country, collectively claiming 14% of visas. So more recent ROW applicants collectively can’t be allocated more than 86% of visas in a year, and any ROW applicants exceeding that threshold will be cut off by the visa bulletin and have to wait for visa availability in a future year.)

I went on to make a table showing the multi-year trend in visa availability, demand, and issuance for China, India, and ROW. The table highlights the tragedy of 2020-2022, when COVID-19 followed by the nearly year-long regional center program shutdown resulted in the loss of 25,880 EB-5 visas. The table illustrates that processing capacity for ROW visa issuance has been a long-term problem, with consulates regularly issuing thousands fewer visas than available to and demanded by ROW. On the other hand, this problem for ROW has been a boon to applicants from China, whose numbers depend on the number of visas leftover from ROW (except in 2020-2022, when China’s numbers sadly depended on a closed consulate and closed regional center program).

In thinking about supply and demand for unreserved visas, we want to not only look at what’s been happening at the visa stage, but also visualize what’s coming down the pipeline as more I-526 get approved. The following table shows the steps I take to estimate the total pipeline demand for unreserved visas as of the end of 2023. Note that this table only estimates demand from pre-RIA investors. Any post-RIA investors who go for unreserved visas will be placed – based on priority date order – at the end of the pre-RIA queues. In other words, my estimate of the existing unreserved visa pipeline suggests that a post-RIA applicant for an unreserved visa would find himself #40,000+ in the China unreserved queue, #5,000+ in the India unreserved queue, or #15,000+ in the Rest of World unreserved queue. Not the place to be, with only 6,800+ total unreserved visas available annually! We’re concerned to see the set-aside queues filling up, because there’s obviously no room for spill-over into the unreserved category.

And finally, tables summarizing market-relevant data from the Report of the Visa Office 2023.

Update on I-526 and I-526E filings to 11/2023 (pipeline demand for rural and HU visas)

See “AIIA FOIA Series: Updated I-526E Inventory Statistics for 2023” (February 29, 2024) for another important update on pipeline demand for rural and high unemployment set-aside visas. I helped make the charts for this article, and encourage everyone concerned about potential backlogs and wait times to read the article, donate to AIIA (so they can keep doing this!), get the Excel from AIIA with all the details, and work on your own analysis. (Shout-out to Matt Galati, who donated his formidable litigation skills to pushing the data request through the FOIA process.)

I don’t have time at the moment to write in detail about what I see, and in any case I advise that you start by grappling with the facts yourself. Then you’ll be prepared to interpret the variety of motivated/limited conclusions that you will hear from others. EB-5 supply/demand and timing analysis is complicated in detail but basically simple: demand > supply = backlogs and wait times. And so we try to track demand.

The data we can get from USCIS — a count of I-526 and I-526E receipts by petitioner country of origin and TEA category — is not an exact predictor of future visa demand. But it’s extremely useful to know, at least, how many investors have entered the queues for rural and high unemployment visas, even as we have to guess about factors such as queue speed through USCIS processing, denial rates, family sizes at the visa stage, and pace of incoming demand since the last report. (I refer to the new queues as “pipeline demand” for rural and high unemployment visas, because so far it is still mostly just in the pipeline, not at the visa stage. I watch the Department of State monthly visa issuance reports, and no set-aside visas had been issued by consulates yet at least up to last report for January 2024.)

A note on dates: it’s a little hard to tell how many months are fully accounted for in the latest FOIA response. USCIS sent AIIA a table with rows through January 2024, but entered just a few numbers in the rows for recent months. Unless people almost stopped filing petitions over the winter, I guess that the latest FOIA request gives data that’s complete through at least October 2023, only partially counted for December and January, and maybe partially counted for November. (If only USCIS had better systems, and could just print reports without so much struggle and fuss! As it is, I suspect that these FOIA responses require someone going to the warehouse and shuffling through paper to make a tally.) But even if we only look at the I-526 inventory accumulated up to November 2023, there’s already a significant message about demand versus future supply of EB-5 visas.

FY2023 Q4 EB-5 Form Data Report (I-526, I-526E, I-829, I-956, I-956F)

USCIS has updated the Immigration and Citizenship Data page with reports for forms filed and processed through FY2023 Q4 (the year and quarter ending September 30, 2023). For EB-5 numbers, I look at All USCIS Application and Petition Form Types (Fiscal Year 2023, Quarter 4) (PDF, 183.88 KB), the California Service Center numbers at Application for Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) Quarterly Report (Fiscal Year 2023, Quarter 4) (PDF, 337.2 KB) and Form I-140, I-360, I-526 Approved EB Petitions Awaiting Visa Final Priority Dates (Fiscal Year 2023, Quarter 4) (PDF, 121.52 KB). I enter the quarterly numbers in my spreadsheets and compare against previous reports to identify trends and answer questions.

My top questions when I look at new EB-5 data: what’s the latest news on pipeline demand for post-RIA visa numbers? How many regional center projects are on the table, and what progress is USCIS making in adjudicating project applications and investor petitions? Are processing volumes increasing or decreasing for pre-RIA and post-RIA forms? What’s the latest news on I-956 and I-956F processing times?

Trend for I-526 and I-526E receipts

Are post-RIA investor petition numbers continuing to climb? How does incoming and cumulative demand look when compared against set-aside visa availability?

Answer from Q4 data: The linear upward trend continued, for a cumulative total of over 2,600 post-RIA I-526 and I-526E filed as of September 30, 2023. (The figure could be nearly 3,000 if one sums quarterly receipt numbers instead of believing the period-end pending and processed numbers.)

If we assume a visas-to-investor ratio of at least 2-to-1 (thinking about family sizes and denials), then 2,600 petitions filed translates into potential demand for at least 5,200 post-RIA visas accumulated in the pipeline as of September 2023. If we guess that filings in Q3 and Q4 continued the previous category breakdown (known from AIIA’s FOIA request of data through Q2) of 23% rural and 70% high unemployment, that would likely mean at least 1,200 pipeline rural applicants and at least 3,600 pipeline high unemployment applicants accumulated by September. If we guess that demand since April moved 100% to rural (the unlikely worst-case scenario for rural and best-case scenario for HU), that could mean at least 4,000 rural and 2,000 HU visa demand in the pipeline by September 2023. The pipeline — continuing to grow as I-526E continue to come in — is headed toward visa availability of about 4,000 rural/2,000 high unemployment in the first year, and about 2,000 rural/1,000 high unemployment in subsequent years. Important considerations for people wondering about future visa wait times that are a function of visa demand exceeding visa supply.

I-526E filings show strong demand to invest in the U.S. and support U.S. job creation; we need visa numbers sufficient to support and sustain that potential. An important advocacy focus for the EB-5 industry, as we face 2024 and beyond.

I-956 and I-956F Volume and Processing Times

How many projects are potentially out in the market raising EB-5 capital, and how many have been reviewed by USCIS? How many regional centers has USCIS reviewed for compliance under RIA?

Answer from Q4 data: USCIS reports a total 12 I-956F project applications processed in FY2023, and 231 I-956F project applications still pending at year-end. In other words, USCIS had reviewed only 5% of the total projects potentially out raising funds. However, I have personally heard about many I-956F approvals in December 2023, so hopefully the next quarterly I-956F report will look better. And I’m happy to see that USCIS has reviewed at least 148 (nearly 40%) of the 379 I-956 regional center applications filed through September. For whatever reason, USCIS is not disclosing denial rates for either I-956 or I-956F – only reporting on total forms processed. The median processing time looks good for the few forms that did manage to get processed – 9 months for I-956 and 12.8 months for I-956F. (This is a nice reference for applicants whose forms that didn’t get processed yet, and who may want to file Mandamus actions.)

from Processing Data Report for FY2023 Q4 (July 1, 2023 to September 30, 2023)

Post-RIA I-526E processing

How is USCIS doing on advancing post-RIA applicants to the visa stage by approving I-526E investor petitions?

Answer from Q4 data: I-526E processing data appears for the first time on the Q4 report, which records 63 I-526E approvals (no denials) both for FY2023 Q4 and the full year. If all 63 investors whose I-526E were approved in FY2023 Q4 can manage to get a FY2024 visa, that’s about 120 to 240 post-RIA visas. Not near the thousands of carryover visas available on a use-it-or-lose-it basis to set-aside categories in FY2024, but much better than nothing!

Pre-RIA I-526 and I-829 Processing

What’s happened to pre-RIA petition processing as USCIS also tries to accommodate the post-RIA workload? Are we anywhere near digging out of the processing collapse that started in 2019? How long will it take to clear the current I-526 and I-829 backlog, if recent processing volume continues?

Answer from Q4 data: USCIS has not abandoned pre-RIA petitions, and obviously made extra effort to improve I-526 and I-829 volumes for the fiscal year-end. There’s been a fairly consistent improvement trend since the rock bottom of 2021, which is great to see. But in a wider context, the best efforts of FY2023 Q4 are still only barely as good as mid-Pandemic processing volume, and still three times lower than the I-526 volumes USCIS was achieving prior to 2019. FY2023 ended with just under 10,000 I-526 and 10,000 I-829 pending. You do the math for how long it would take to clear that inventory if USCIS continues to adjudicate at a rate of 1,300 I-526 and 800 I-829 per quarter. The Investor Program Office must continue to ramp up its efforts (not slack off, as we’ve seen so far in the months since September).

People at the back of the inventory for I-526 and I-829 processing need not necessarily despair about their processing times, however, because processing is not close to FIFO. I know from other sources that USCIS has recently primarily been processing I-526 filed in November 2019 – nearly the end of the I-526 queue – and has been approving many I-829 filed in 2020, 2021, 2022, and even 2023, even as the median I-829 processing time reflects cases filed in 2019. See the charts below and on my regularly-updated Processing Data page the processing distribution of recent I-526 and I-829 approvals.

The I-526 denial rate continues to appear very high (37%); however, I have inside information that more than half of the decisions reported in the I-526 denial category in Q4 were actually voluntary withdrawals. The I-829 denial rate was 15% in Q4 — slightly higher than average. USCIS has reported no I-526E denials yet.

And finally, a note for anyone who benefits from my data reports that you are welcome to help make all this work worthwhile with a Paypal contribution. Happy New Year!

from Processing Data Report for FY2023 Q4 (July 1, 2023 to September 30, 2023)

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.