EB-5 IIPO Issuing “Limited” Regional Center Decisions - EB5Investors.com

EB-5 IIPO Issuing “Limited” Regional Center Decisions

Dillon Colucci

Recently, the Immigrant Investor Program Office (IIPO) has begun issuing “limited” decisions on regional center applications. These limited decisions by the IIPO approve a Form I-924, Application for Regional Center under the Immigrant Investor Pilot Program, but only approve certain parts of the Form I-924 and reject others. Accordingly, the IIPO-issued Form I-924 approval notice typically will approve the regional center, but limit the scope of its requested geographic or industry categories. For example, if a regional center files a Form I-924 based on a hypothetical hotel project, but requests industry categories in health care, USCIS may deny those industry categories it determines are not supported by the hypothetical project submitted with the Form I-924.

This is a positive, because USCIS’ previous policy of rejecting a Form I-924 or issuing multiple requests for evidences or notices of intents to deny, significantly delayed the adjudication of a Form I-924 and frustrated many EB-5 stakeholders. It appears USCIS will now reject certain components of a Form I-924 it deems unworthy of approval, but still issue an approval for a regional center if that regional center can provide support in other areas. To a certain extent, this makes more sense than the previous process because a regional center’s geographical scope and industry categories may be amended through the filing of a Form I-526, Immigrant Petitioner by Alien Entrepreneur, per the binding May 30, 2013 USCIS EB-5 Policy Memorandum. IIPO processing times for Form I-924s have increased, and hopefully these “limited” decisions will decrease processing times. 

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