Latest EB-5 News
A New EB-5 Law May Be Enacted
New EB-5 Law?
Yesterday, a new EB-5 bill was circulated in Congress. Its backers will attempt to attach it to the continuing budget resolution that needs to be passed by March 23rd to continue to fund the government. The bill would implement significant changes to the Regional Center program. It would extend the EB-5 Regional Center statute; increase the investment amount to $925,000 in a rural or priority urban area (i.e. a high poverty area) and $1,025,000 in other areas; increase the job creation requirement from 10 to 12 jobs in most areas; and impose a 120-day moratorium on filing new I-526s! I will report more on this next week.
Vietnam EB-5 Quota to Backlog for the First Time
On or about March 10th, the Department of State will issue its April visa bulletin. It is reported the bulletin will show that the EB-5 preference category will reach the annual visa allotment for Vietnam. Thus, Vietnamese EB-5 investors may experience waiting time for a visa number in addition to processing time. The length of wait time will depend on demand for visa numbers. Each month when the new visa bulletin is issued, we will watch the advancing of the wait time for a visa in this category. We have filed a number of EB-5 applications for people from Vietnam. Our Associate Attorney, Nam-Giao Do, is fluent in Vietnamese.
More on Evidence of Status for I-829 Dependents
In my last newsletter, I discussed a change in US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) procedures for dependents of principals with pending I-829 applications to obtain proof of lawful status. A few clients were told by the Application Support Center that they will not be issued extension stickers on their conditional resident cards and should seek an I-551 temporary green card stamp in their passport. But this may not be easy, as USCIS is closing many of its local offices’ InfoPass appointment services to the public.
USCIS has responded to a number of my inquiries for duplicate I-829 receipts for dependents and said they will be issued. However, those receipts have not yet arrived.
We will see if the system for acquiring proof of lawful status improves to meet dependents’ needs, such as for obtaining driver’s licenses and for travel.