The EB-5 investor visa program allows a foreign national to obtain a green card if he or she invests money in the United States which creates jobs in the United States. An individual must invest $1 million, or $500,000 in certain rural or high-unemployment areas, and create or preserve at least 10 U.S. Worker jobs. The foreign national can invest directly in his or her own project or in a government approved Regional Center. A Regional Center assembles and manages EB-5 investment projects and an investment in a Regional Center project can count direct and indirect job creation.

Critics of the EB-5 program say that it has fraud and security risks. Without action by Congress, the program will expire on September 30, 2016. The organizations said in their letter to Congress that the program has played an important role in creating jobs in the United States, and allowing it to lapse would have “immediate negative consequences” to U.S. projects and businesses counting on EB-5 funding.

“The EB-5 Regional Center program, while imperfect, has resulted in investments in the United States exceeding $15 billion in the last 10 years which have generated 100,000 U.S. jobs,” said Stewart Rabinowitz, a Dallas immigration attorney with Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, P.C. “Instead of killing a program with substantial employment impact, Congress should consider integrity and other program improvements.”

An attempt to renew the program failed in the Senate in December, 2015.. Lawmakers agree that stronger national security and anti-fraud provisions are needed, and the organizations said in their letter that they support those reforms. The coalition said that lawmakers and stakeholders should join together to build consensus and create a compromise reform package.

The EB-5 Regional Center program will expire on September 30, 2016 unless Congress reauthorizes it, and many in Congress are concerned about fraud after the Vermont Jay Peak indictments, the largest of many which have occurred, and also about ways to measure the economic benefits of the program.  EB-5 interest groups have begun pressure on Congress to extend the Regional Center provisions accepting many proposed integrity changes and even a likely increase in the investment amount perhaps to $1,200,000 or $800,000 if in a high unemployment or rural area.  The EB-5 program has never had an increase in the investment threshold since the program came into existence in 1990.  Efforts to extend the EB-5 Regional Center program failed last December, 2015, and Congress extended the program unchanged until this coming September.

In its July, 2016 EB-5 processing time information, USCIS reports a 16+ month adjudication time for EB-5 petitioners seeking conditional permanent resident status, and an additional 20+ months for those investors with conditional residence who file to remove conditions of their residence, which is another petition filed with USCIS about 2 years later.  While these processing delays are long, they have not affected investors’ interest and participation in the EB-5 program arising out of the processing wait period.

For citizens of China, though, it is not just processing time that delays gaining lawful permanent resident status, it is having a visa number available.  Unlike foreign nationals from every other country who use the EB-5 program and who have a visa number immediately available, a factor unrelated to USCIS petitioning processing time, investors from China who filed their EB-5 petitions for conditional lawful permanent resident status in February, 2014 have a visa available in August, 2016.  Those Chinese investors who have filed there EB-5 petitions after February, 2014 must wait for a visa number to become available before the investor and his or her family can immigrate to the U.S.  Current information is that USCIS has about 40,000 EB-5 cases filed by Chinese EB-5 investors which are awaiting to be decided, and 20,000 additional Chinese investor EB-5 cases which USCIS has approved but are awaiting visa availability.  Visa availability is an issue because there is an annual quota of just 10,000 EB-5 visas available for investors world-wide, not just from China.  The likelihood is that the wait for all pending and approved EB-5 Chinese investor cases will be years before all such EB-5 Chinese investor cases will have a visa number available.  This multi-year visa wait will likely decrease EB-5 demand from China, prompting EB-5 Regional Centers to seek out investors other countries, especially from India and Vietnam, to benefit from the program.

Stay tuned to EB-5 Regional Center developments as they unfold.