June 17, 2020
By Carolyn Lee
Mr. Charlie Oppenheim provided another important update to the EB-5 stakeholder community during his IIUSA talk yesterday. I was honored to moderate the panel after, where we were given opportunity to ask follow-up questions.
Here are the top ten takeaways from Mr. Oppenheim’s talk:
- If U.S. Consulates do not reopen for EB-5 visa issuance, we may lose about 5500 EB-5 visas this fiscal year.
- The lost EB-5 visas will “fall up” to EB-1 next fiscal year (FY 2021) by operation of Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
- However, the loss of EB-5 visas this year will be offset by a gain of EB-5 visas next year.
- It happens like this: unused Family-Based numbers will “fall across” or spillover to Employment-Based numerical limits.
- Oppenheim expects at least 60,000 Family-Based number to fall across to Employment-Based limits in FY2021, adding to the 140,000 annual Employment-Based numerical limit.
- EB-5 will get 7.1% of the spillover numbers. For example, if 60,000 visas are added to the Employment-Based limits, EB-5 would get about 4,200 additional numbers.
- If we lose about 5500 EB-5 numbers this year, we will need about 78,000 numbers added from Family-Based limits in FY2021 to offset the lost numbers. This is the number to watch for.
- Oppenheim also indicated that several thousand Chinese cases are at National Visa Center (NVC) awaiting additional documents. These documents must be submitted to get interviewed when the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou reopens.
- India is now “CURRENT” under the July 2020 Visa Bulletin here.
- KEY TAKEAWAY: If investors’ I-526 is approved and the file is with NVC, respond to NVC requests for documents right away and complete visa application documentation.
Contact Carolyn if you have questions about how this affects your EB-5 project or case.
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