U.S. Department of State Releases October 2022 Visa Bulletin

Set-Asides Remain Current, Unreserved Retrogresses

Thursday, September 8, 2022 - The U.S. Department of State (DOS) has published the monthly Visa Bulletin for October 2022, revealing new cut-off dates for EB-5 visa applicants for the upcoming month.

Although October marks the beginning of a new federal fiscal year, with new annual visa allocations, the China-Mainland Born and India EB-5 final action dates for October have retrogressed for the EB-5 Unreserved Category. This impacts Direct and Regional Center EB-5 filings that occurred before the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, enacted on March 15, 2022, and any new petitions that do not qualify for High Unemployment, Rural, or Infrastructure Set-Asides.
 
EB-5 final action dates for new investors filing I-526E in High Unemployment, Rural, or Infrastructure projects remain current. Under the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, any un-used, set-aside numbers from FY22 will roll over to FY23, resulting in a larger allocation of visas for new investors filing I-526E under these categories. We strongly encourage new investors to file now to take advantage of the set-aside visas. 

The U.S. Department of State uses data from applicants filing DS260 (who are current on Chart B - Dates for Filing) to determine current and future demand for visas. If DOS finds that more applicants are documentarily qualified and current on Chart A than there are visas available, the date will retrogress. DOS had previously indicated that many Mainland China-born EB-5 investors who they believed to be current on Chart B were not filing DS260s and becoming documentarily qualified. Likely, many Chinese have now filed DS-260 causing heavy demand for visas abroad at the consulates. This resulted in a retrogression of the final action date for Mainland China-born EB-5 unreserved categories, moving the priority date from December 2015 to March 2015. 

In addition, sufficient India demand from those documentarily qualified has materialized in the Employment-Based Fifth Preference unreserved category imposing a November 2019 final action date for October. This category was previously current. In addition, Indians have also retrogressed on Chart B to December 2019. Indian-born applicants will remain current for the remainder of September. If you are India born and eligible for adjustment of status please consult your attorney about filing I-485 before September 30th. 

Last year additional visas from the family categories were made available to the employment categories (including EB-5). September 30th is the end of the USCIS fiscal year. Based on preliminary numbers, we anticipate that many EB-5 visas will go unused and be lost at the end of the fiscal year. DOS anticipates lower visa number availability for the unreserved category for FY-2023 as compared to FY-2021 and FY-2022, due to COVID19 when a large number of visas from the family categories went unused and were made available to the employment categories (including EB-5).

Also due to the new reserve categories created by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, there are fewer visas available to the unreserved category in FY23.

DOS will continually monitor this data and make any adjustments to stay within the annual limits. If you have any questions, contact our office directly at info@firstpathway.com.

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