eb5 latest news today

So USCIS faces judgement calls when it comes to how to treat previously-approved regional centers and their investors, and should hear our input for those judgement calls. (For example see IIUSAs letter here, the joint industry letter here, and AIIAs letter here.) Are expedite approvals and mandamus actions having a significant impact? Here are answers gathered from the documents published today by USCIS. If USCIS starts terminating regional centers for not filing I-956 by December 29, 2022, instead of offering another status for RCs still responsibly shepherding previous EB-5 investment, then past investors in those RCs will find their immigration status in jeopardy. Announcement on Resumption of Processing of EB-5 Visas - Travel 29, 2022, is no longer the deadline to file Form I-956, Application for Regional Center Designation, amendments, as required by the Behring Settlement, and Form I-956G, Regional Center Annual Statement. (Insights from jobpostings), IPO has had fewer people working less productively on EB-5 forms, compilation of IPO job postings in 2022/2023, An Open Letter to Kevin Muck at IPO about I-526 data and avoiding EB-5backlogs, wrote over and over to the IPO Customer Service Mailbox, the engagement was called in January 2023, RIA Implementation Status, one yearlater, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, USCIS Immigration and Citizenship data page, FY2022 Annual Report of the Visa Office for EB-5 visas issued bycountry, ready and registered at the National Visa Center, Department of State/AILA Liaison Committee Meeting February 9, 2023, presentation by Charles Oppenheim for IIUSA, EB-5 Integrity Fund FAQ, with notes on regional center status and investmentperiod, USCIS to Start Collecting Fee for EB-5 Integrity Fund. If only USCIS would report timely and category/country-specific I-526 filing data, then we could project and compare in-process visa demand with available visa supply to calculate availability/timing for each EB-5 category. ), and on-going terrible performance by the Investor Program Office. I will shortly publish a separate post and new pages with the updates Ive been collecting on I-526 and I-829 processing, adjustment of status, consular processing, the backlog and visa availability, and processing conditions generally. IPO has over 13,000 I-526 pending today, and has not processed more than 400 I-526 a month since 2018, and not more than 200 I-526 per month since July 2021. This ruling vacated the Nov. 2019 regulations that raised the minimum investment amount for EB-5 from $500,000 to $900,000 and the definition of a Targeted Employment Area (TEA) reverted back to . 5 Comments. A possible interpretation of investor is someone still in the investment period, Investment period means the period from I-526 filing through the point of I-829 filing, on the authority of a 2021 blog post by Canadian financial professional Rupy Cheema of EB5 Diligence. USCIS does not officially give visibility into which dates they are actively processing, and which they are leaving behind. Youre welcome. Considering the factors summarized above, an individual I-526 or I-526E filed today may avoid an unthinkably long processing time if (1) IPO dramatically increases the amount and productivity of I-526 adjudication resources and/or (2) IPO implements exceptions to the nominally First-Come-First-Served order that benefit that particular I-526, or (3) that particular I-526 or a massive number of other petitioners give up and drop out of the process. I will update this post if I learn of a chance to respond with questions and concerns. Family-Based Dates for Filing Charts 2.2. Although we are interested in receiving overall feedback about the EB-5 program, we would appreciate focusing the Q&A portion of the engagement on the topics above. USCIS as a whole is laboring under resource and backlog challenges. Visa availability will be transparent and predictable. The effect of the Integrity Act on previously-approved regional centers and their investors remains unclear. This update successfully deletes all references to repealed regional centers. Latest EB-5 News and Blog Posts - FirstPathway But now, USCIS is reaching out with a chance to talk. Many jobs were posted as open exclusively to current USCIS employees, and all (except the secretaries) were limited to current or former federal employees, with some flexibility for veterans, military spouses, and Peace Corps. In practice, IPO processing output has been very low for an office with 200+ employees mostly earning $100,000+ per year each. EB-5 is stable today in the sense that it neither requires nor anticipates near-term legislative action. None asked for experience with business or investment. Under the new law, regional center termination means that good faith investors in the terminated regional center lose eligibility in 180 days unless (1) the investors NCE manages to switch sponsors and secure affiliation from a different still-authorized regional center (practically a fraught and expensive undertaking) or (2) the investor makes a new investment (yikes). We will not address case-specific questions, questions outside the scope of the engagement, or issues under active litigation or likely to be litigated. Includes latest news stories, videos, match reports and much more. RIA impact on pre-RIA Regional Centers and investors(comment), December/January Updates (Regional Center status, visa availability, I-526 and I-829 Processing in Q4, Fee Rule, Form I-526 and I-956 revisions andcomments), Federal Register has re-opened opportunity, USCISs digest and responses to the previous round of comments, another chance to provide feedback to USCIS, Form I-956K, Registration for Direct and Third-Party Promoters, vague terms pointed out in the draft I-956K, October 2022 Regional Center Business Journal, EB-5 roller coaster continues (RC status after December 29, processing, FY2023 visas, EAGLE Act and countrycaps), from the October 14, 2022 meeting between USCIS and the plaintiffs in the Behring litigation, Annual Numerical Limits for Fiscal Year 2023, 10/19 EB-5 Stakeholder Meeting (call recording, I-956 and I-956G for pre-existing RCs, termination risk,sustainment), EB-5 National Stakeholder Engagement Talking Points (PDF, 238.48 KB), National Engagement EB-5 Stakeholder PowerPoint Presentation (PDF, 315.88 KB), a link to my recording of the 10/19 EB-5 Stakeholder Engagement, I-526, I-829, and I-485 Processing (FY2022 Q3 report and leakeddata), a copy of an email I received yesterday from USCIS, March 2022 Oppenheim presentation for IIUSA, Facing FY2023, Suggested Articles, October 2022 VisaBulletin, Fiscal Year 2023 Employment-Based Adjustment of Status FAQs, Reserved Visa Rules, Possible Future Visa Allocation, and Recommendations, IIUSA Questions and Comments for October 19, 2022, EB-5 Stakeholder Engagement, IIUSA Teams Up with Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli & Pratt to Seek USCIS Records on EB-5 Source of Funds Adjudications. Many 2019 decisions in May 2022 were likely on direct petitions that had received RFEs during the shutdown. I wont publish a recording. ); 1:03 Rana Jazayerli (I-956 amendment filings, does it preclude also requesting expanded geography? Surely IPO was right to ignore Suzanne when she wrote over and over to the IPO Customer Service Mailbox, begging for backlog-relevant I-526 data to enable backlog/wait time prediction! ], From: U.S. IPO has not explained why it has assigned only 15% of its employees to adjudicate the Form that accounts for more than 50% of its fee-paid workload, or whether that allocation decision is open to change. LCR Analysis of SEF Statistics | April 2023 . And the escape route offered in (M) is only theoretical, since USCIS permission is no guarantee that a good faith investor or NCE can in fact have a viable option to associate with another regional center. The statutory language could justify a reading as limited as people who invested and filed I-526/I-526E in the previous fiscal year under RC sponsorship to as broad as people at any immigration stage whose investment was still in some sense under RC custody in the previous fiscal year. The USCIS fee policy published today in the Federal Register presents this reasoning: This is a sober recital of the content of the Federal Register notice. That estimate considers the number of Chinese applicants with pre-2018 priority dates whom I calculate will still be pre-green-card by 2025 (further considering newly-restricted unreserved visa availability and pending rest-of-world demand). I collected EB-5-specific data from the All Forms and I-485 reports, summarized below, and created charts to place the reports in context. I have requested this so many times from USCIS, but I know your name and your face now, Kevin Muck, and the size of your salary, and I appeal to you personally. Job descriptions offer a view into the workings of an organization. Eleven of the advertised positions include this among the job duties. My dream for the future is that EB-5 will also stabilize in the sense of offering a reliable opportunity to immigrate based on investment. I recommend that everyone read the text of the preliminary injunction, to see what it does and more important does not say. Also, pointing out which applicants the visa office accounts for in setting monthly visa bulletin dates, which applicants (by contrast) we need to account for in estimating visa wait times, and what all that means for predicting future action dates. However, I appreciate that USCIS put all of IPO leadership on-stage to speak to us, and the level of detail shared. (I dont know whether to laugh or cry at this evidence that the USCIS Office of Policy and Strategy was apparently not sweating over statute, regulations, or precedent decisions or its own Policy Manual but just casting about the Internet to find a policy for the EB-5 investment period, but props to EB5 Diligence for catching OPSs eye and earning the footnote citation in the Federal Register notice! EB-5 visa issuance in FY2022 was as high as it was thanks to an unprecedented high number of status adjustments (37% of the total, as compared with 17% in 2019). 12 Comments. Reasonable exit strategies will be expected and possible. Ill comment in more detail when USCIS publishes the prepared statements, as promised. If the job duties described in the 2022/2023 IPO job postings are actually performed, then we can expect a number of developments. Input will be provided in accordance with existing channels of communication and in compliance with Section 107 of the RIA. The actual number of visas available per-country in a given year can be significantly higher than the 473 base case based on carryover of family-based visas (as happened in FY2022 and happening again in FY2023 due to COVID-19), carryover of reserved visas (as should happen in 2024 and 2025 assuming law compliance and continued slow I-526 processing), and unreserved visas leftover after country caps (which should increasingly benefit China in coming years). Chinese). EB-5 processing times exploded in recent years primarily because IPO has had fewer people working less productively on EB-5 forms. ); 1:25 Michele Franchett (encouragement to engage, question about application of audit exemption to fund administration requirement), Petition by Investor to Remove Conditions, I-485 at the California Service Center (WSC), Number of I-526 completed in the quarter ended March 31, Average I-526 completions per working day in the quarter ended March 31, Approximate number of IPO employees as of March, Number of employees gained or lost by IPO during the previous 2-year period, Number of IPO employees assigned to I-526, F. USCIS reports in stakeholder meeting notes, Congressional testimony, and/or litigation declarations, Percent of IPO employees assigned to I-526 adjudication, Percent change to IPOs number of adjudicators assigned to I-526 2018-2022, Average I-526 completions per I-526 adjudicator in the quarter ended March 31, Percent change to IPOs productivity per I-526 adjudicator 2018-2022, Estimated time (months) to process all I-526 pending as of March 31, assuming that the rate of completion from the most recent quarter continues going forward, Median processing time (months) of I-526 completions in this fiscal year, Approximate number of I-526 pending as of March from China-born petitioners, M. Estimated from USCIS report for 10/2018; DOS report for 11/2021, Approximate number of pending I-526 with visas available, Number of I-526 expedite requests granted by USCIS, O. USCIS report in declaration for litigation, Theoretical hours of Touch time per I-526 reported by USCIS and used by DHS as a basis to budget for needed I-526 fee revenue, Actual touch time hours per I-526 adjudication calculated from completions per I-526 adjudicator in the quarter ended March 31, I-526 filing fees associated with pending I-526 ($ millions), Percent of I-526 decisions in the quarter ended March 31 that were denials or withdrawals (not approvals), USCIS is revising Form I-526, Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneur, to accommodate the, Revision of Form I-526 We have released a revised version of Form I-526, Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneur, splitting it into two versions to accommodate the. Amarnath Yatra 2023: Sonmarg admin flags off - Longview News-Journal We reveal the cost and requirements of the EB5 visa in 2022!Watch this exclusive WEBINAR w. (F)(v) Parameters for Capital Redeployment. Family-Based Green Cards 2.1. Investors originally sponsored by bad actor regional centers may be thankful for a prospect however slim to change sponsors upon USCIS termination. EB-5 processing volumes have yet to recover from the regional center program shutdown or the new law (not to mention the 2019 Reset Training at IPO), but I keep watching and hoping. Todd Young, IPO Communications and Liaison Team Chief. I continue to update my Processing Data page with intel as I receive it on I-526 and I-829 processing. With three months since Congress passed the new EB-5 law, is IPO back to work? This includes processing new I526 petitions from immigrants investing through previously authorized regional centers like Behring, just as the agency would do for a newly approved regional center. I tend to disregard this number because its (1) not predictive (simply reflects one point of past performance) and (2) not generally applicable even to past performance (the processing time range behind this median is extremely wide, as further discussed below). As an aside, note that USCIS is making what might be a good faith effort to improve case processing reporting, and solicits public input. ), Filed under EB-5 Events, EB-5 Law & Policy, Updates from USCIS, October 11, 2022 In EB-5, Chinese investors who filed I-526 before 2018 and Indian investors who filed I-526 in 2019-2021 suffer from country caps, while others largely benefit. Reading the policy manual and the website, I guess that writers have been instructed as much as possible just quote the law and dont add any clarifications or further guidance, which could get us sued., October 7, 2022 Regional centers who love the profits of redeployment and investors who hate the risks of redeployment both snowed USCIS in conflicting passionate feedback on this topic. The orders content has been misrepresented in the PR Ive seen about it so far, so caution is needed. Despite what the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act said, the published FY2023 annual limit for EB-5 visas is exactly and only 7.1% of the EB limit. The April 25, 2023 EB-5 Stakeholder Engagement had a Microsoft Teams webinar format, with IPO staff speaking on video and a chat box where the public had a chance to type questions viewable to admins only. January 6, 2023 (The next annual fee, for FY2024, will then come due in October 2023.) 45 Comments. I particularly look forward to USCIS revising I-956G Annual Statement (which is predicated on the now discredited interpretation that RIA canceled pre-RIA regional center designations), and the new I-526E (which conflates ownership with decision rights over EB-5 investment in the definition of persons involved). Thus pending applicants from any one country can only expect up to 7% of the 68% unreserved EB-5 visas (with otherwise unused unreserved numbers going to the oldest priority dates i.e. Under the new law, regional center termination has consequences for investors at all stages in the process, including during conditional permanent residence. The I-956K instructions request that a promoter should submit Form I-956K before operating on behalf of any of the specified entities or promoting any offering under the EB-5 Regional Center Program. (See also the article Who are Promoters and What Requirements Apply to Them Under the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act? in the October 2022 Regional Center Business Journal, and the above-linked Federal Register invitation to submit I-956 comments to USCIS. This table highlights significant detail worth thinking about. USCIS had been mainly processing I-526 with October to December 2018 priority dates back in early 2021, before the regional center processing freeze, so Im not surprised to see those dates back on the table now. However, the words efficiency and productivity also appear several times, and four positions even include customer service among the required competencies. Not that RCs have much practically to do for in-process past investors; the issue is that INA 203(b)(5)(M) now defines devastating investor consequences from regional center sponsor termination. This fact limits how much sophistication or effectiveness we can expect from IPO when it comes to evaluating EB-5 investor petitions or overseeing the regional center industry. (Personally I would not file I-526 relying on an I-924 exemplar approval without I-956F, since I-924 had half the content required for an exemplar under the new law plus different approval standards, and any material change cancels exemplar deference according to the new law.) Why could that prospect want timely data to show whether/when I-526 volume overall is sufficient to max out the category and activate country caps once the demand reaches the visa stage? IPO organization has been heavily weighted with administrative and ancillary staff. July 2023 Visa Bulletin | Analysis Including EB2 Priority Date India Ive noted that about two years has long been a favorite guess to answer the question How long does I-526 take? Actual estimates are tough, and the two-year guess looks relatively tolerable (still longer than I-526 should take, but about the outside limit of how long most EB-5 project developers and investors can imagine waiting in limbo). Find all the latest relevant articles and news items about EB-5 visa investment and related investment services. As recent as FY 2019, Indian nationals had the second largest number of EB-5 visas granted (760) among all other countries. Not applicable. The year ahead for the United States EB-5 Investment - Gulf News People are welcome to use this blog comment section as a forum for sharing experience and asking questions, but note that larger and better arranged EB-5 groups are also available, including https://goaiia.org/, https://t.me/EB5VisaGroup, https://t.me/+NWEYhY6y81AzYzIx, and https://t.me/+N0K7TuzrPYQwMDJl Email [email protected] if you know of other groups that I should mention, or if you need help joining a group. This creates a grey area for the many regional centers that were only approved and only raised investment under the old law. But instead, I made a picture. IIUSA Blog - Invest In the USA A question was asked about reporting I-526/I-526E receipt data by TEA category/country, for the purpose of monitoring and avoiding backlogs in the new TEA categories. I do not know the reasons for departing from FIFO discipline in I-829 adjudications. Caught in limbo: Foreign investors, including Indians, sue USCIS - News FY2022 Q3 Performance Data Report Excerpt. USCISs answer on the investment period will make the difference between whether Chinese, Indians, and Vietnamese who risk an EB-5 investment today can expect to exit the investment after as little as two years (the artificial sustainment period apparently in the Reform and Integrity Act) or as long as over a decade (the time it could take investors to reach the I-829 stage considering current processing time/volume trends and the visa backlog risk in categories with small per-country visa availability under TEA percentages and country caps). I depend on you to talk USCIS out of its practice of concealing I-526/I-526E filing information. If anyone would like to leak reasons to me, please reach out on email, phone, or Telegram. Besides organizational detail, which Ill discuss further in a separate post, the teleconference included the following new and controversial input. IIUSA Data Report: EB-5 Processing Times Showed Signs of Improvement in

Cheap Health Insurance For Young Adults Under 26, Words With Aco In The Middle, How To Pronounce Incorporation, Henry Weinhard's Root Beer, How Do Crustaceans Breathe, Articles E