U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released Q2 EB-5 petition data for fiscal year 2019 and what it shows may surprise you.
I-526 Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneur
Takeaway points:
- The I-526 Petition data shows that processing times have really slowed down. The office only processed about 1,000 petitions in Q2 of 2019. It’s unclear why processing times have slowed down, but at this rate, it’s not looking great for the visa backlog.
- Only 580 petitions were received by the Immigrant Investor Program Office (IPO) in Q2, making for a roughly 68% decrease from the previous quarter.
- On the other hand, a slowdown in processing times could benefit other nations who are not suffering visa retrogression. Slower processing times will (and have as evidenced by the lower number of petitions received this quarter) deter people from filing petitions. South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, South Africa and other nations could benefit from filing now.
I-829 Petition by Entrepreneur to Remove Conditions on Permanent Resident Status
Takeaway points:
- Like the I-526 Petitions, far fewer I-829 Petitions have been processed this quarter as well. In fact, the backlog has increased by about 700 petitions, but there about 4,000 less I-829 petitions pending than there are I-526 petitions pending.
- Good news is, there are still very few petitions being denied by the IPO.
Conclusion:
- These numbers will surely have the EB-5 industry reaching out to USCIS for an explanation as to why the number of EB-5 petitions being processed this quarter decreased so drastically.
- That said, if USCIS continues down this path, it won’t be good for countries with a visa backlog.
- What we hope to see happen is USCIS picks up the pace in Q3 and that we see the EB-5 visa cap changed to only count principal investors and not their dependents, so as to start tackling the visa backlog.
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