Surge in Chinese applicants may mark historical first for visa.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: For the first time ever, the US Department of State may introduce a retrogression on all EB-5 visa dates from China, creating the country’s first backlog in the 24-year history of the EB-5 visa program.
The announcement of such a drastic measure came in the State Department’s visa bulletin for this month, which states that China’s EB-5 cap for the entire year of 2014 is already dangerously close to being met. China’s EB-5 cap is approximately 10,000, and if the number is met prematurely, it will likely necessitate that priority dates are shifted back, thus creating a Chinese backlog for the first time since the program’s inception.
The EB-5, or Employment-Based preference 5th category, visa was created under the Immigration Act of 1990, and is given to individuals who come to the US and obtain a green card by investing a minimum of either $500,000 or $1 million, based on where they want to go and what their investment funds will go into.
Investors from the Chinese mainland constitute a whopping 80% of all EB-5 applicants to the US, which explains the dire situation that the annual cap and priority dates find themselves in. In the case of EB-5 visas, an applicant’s priority date is the same exact date that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) receives an individual’s I-526 petition firm, which is the essential documentation needed to apply for an EB-5 visa.
It’s important to note, however, that a shift in priority dates has not yet occurred; there merely exists the possibility that such action could be taken. But all signs point to it being a matter of “when,” not “if,” and it looks like this will most likely be taking place in the late summer, possibly as soon as August or September.
If and when retrogression of Chinese EB-5 visa dates does take place, the Department of State and USCIS will come out with provisions and guidance for affected applicants to follow, but such a notice has not yet come from either bureau.
4 Comments
India have very tough immigration laws. Yet they prey on the liberal immigration laws of the West. Look at Toronto, Vancouver, Amsterdam and Melbourne. The numbers of rapes in Scandanavia has skyrocketed and crime is going through the roof as well as the welfare system being totally overburdened. Same issues in the UK. Do we have to allow all these pencil pushing, lazy people instead of hard working Europeans to come to the USA. We will look back in 50 years, our grandchildren will despise us for giving away such a beautiful, Christian country.
It is almost impossible believe that after the experience of Canada, UK, Holland, Australia with flooding by Asian immigrants, mostly Chinese and Indians, we are so gullible as to continue to allow ourselves to swamped by these people. Soon, we will wake up, but even now, our politicians are afraid of the voting block of these people and will not make changes. Yes, we do need immigrants, we need the blue collar workers from Europe, not lazy scammers who push pens and look for safe billets. We will regret this.
hail Hitler, we must start to recolonizing all these countries again and also start, no increase the slave trade before these lazy pencil pushers swamp us!. We invented the scam and we are number one in scamming the world and we cannot afford not using major resources of the world. We cannot be in slumber and give up our capacity to exploit the world and allow our drones to gather dust. Let us retain our number one position of gun runners of the world, it is dangerous for us to allow them to progress let us give them more weapons so that they maintain their infighting.
The cap is 10,000 EB-5 visas in total – it is not just a Chinese quota. The Chinese are using close to 8,000 of the 10,000 total EB-5 visas.