Stop Gap Funding Bill Passes in Congress

A temporary stop gap spending bill has been passed by Congress which will fund the government and various immigration operations until February 18, 2022. This provides Congress with more time to debate the FY 2022 federal budget without causing a shutdown.

In this spending bill, the immigration programs that have been extended includes the E-Verify and the Conrad 30 program. However, it does not include the EB-5 Regional Center program. The EB-5 program, also known as the Million Dollar Green Card, allows investors to obtain a green card if they invest either $800,000 or $1,050,000 in business or projects that will create 10 full time jobs. To learn more about the EB-5 program, please click here. To learn more about regional centers, please click here.

This means that the Regional Center program which has been suspended since June 2021, will remain suspended. USCIS is no longer accepting new I-526 and I-829 cases at the moment, they are also not reviewing previous submitted cases. Cases that have been issued RFE and NOIDs still have to respond by the provided deadline, however the response will not be reviewed until the program is activated again. USCIS are reviewing and processing non-regional center affiliated EB-5 applications. The Regional Center program’s reactivation will be on the table again in February 2022.