First Quarter Review - 2013 - EB5Investors.com

First Quarter Review of the EB-5 Program – 2013

Kate Kalmykov

The numbers for the first quarter of 2013 are coming out, and USCIS has been busy.  Data on USCIS processing times from the California Service Center runs to January 2013 and predicts processing serving times to be 11.7 months, 3.7 months beyond their targeted goal.  The date of the last processed I-526 is March 16, 2012, although GT has had I-526s approved recently in as little as 6 months.

This year so far, USCIS has ramped up I-924 adjudications, deciding more applications in the first quarter of FY 2013 than all of FY 2012. Moreover, pending I-829 cases are on the decline, reflecting a year on year increase in completions. January 2013 saw about twice the completions of I-829 petitions as January 2012.  Although there continues to be a backlog in I-526 cases, January 2013 was the third highest month for completions in the past two years and a twenty percent increase from last January.   If USCIS keeps up this pace, stakeholders could see a decrease in overall processing times for applications.

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