April Visa Bulletin: India’s EB-5 Priority Date Moves forward by almost 2 Years

If you want a green card and have ever thought about starting or purchasing a business in the United States an EB-5 Investor Visa could be perfect for you.  Generally speaking, the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa (“EB-5 Visa”) requires that you invest either $1,050,000 in a city settings, or $800,000 in rural settings, and in return, the U.S. Government will give you a Green Card.   To learn more about the EB-5 program, please click here. For more information on the new EB-5 rules, please click here.-

In the most recent April 2020 visa bulletin, the retrogression for India moved forward almost 2 years from 2017 to January 2019. While this might suggest a reduction in wait times, the reality is more likely a slowdown in I-526 adjudications. It is likely that the adjudication rate will slow further because of the impact of Coronavirus-related closures.

Every year, Congress sets limits on the number of immigrant visas that can be issued each year. In order to adjust status to that of a legal permanent resident, also known as a Green Card holder, an immigrant visa must be available to the applicant both at the time of filing and at the time of adjudication. No one country in the category is allowed to exceed more than 7% of the visas allowed.  For applicants from countries that have exceeded the 7% allowance, a “visa retrogression” (or wait-list) is applied to the country. For more information on options if you are currently retrogressed, please click here and here. USCIS recently changed its adjudicating procedure to adjudicate petitions from countries that are not currently retrogressed first before the retrogressed countries. For more information, please click here. This would mean that wait times for these countries will only increase. Please click here to learn more about children aging out.