How are legislators dealing with the EB-5 visa number quota?

There is proposed legislation which addresses the EB-5 quotas and backlogs. It makes common sense to increase the quota numbers, however, there are a number of political reasons why there are delays in increasing the numbers. The decrease of time delays in obtaining residency will allow the EB-5 program to grow and will give predictability to the investors in planning their relocation to the U.S.

Unfortunately, this is not among the issues under consideration in the pending legislation.

As far as we are aware to date, the recapturing of unused visas for EB-5 is not part of any legislation being introduced.

No legislation is pending on this issue. The current bill may eventually incorporate your idea but nothing has been done so far.

There have been a variety of legislative proposals to recapture unused visa numbers, but so far none have made any progress. It is important mostly for investors from China that, one way or another, additional visa numbers be provided. There have been other suggestions that would allow unused visa numbers to be recaptured and utilized and while there has been legislation proposed and even introduced, it has made no progress. Most recently, there has been a significant proposal in the legislation of U.S. Senator John Cornyn, the Majority Whip, that provides that only principal investors and not their dependents would be counted against the annual 10,000-persona quota. If EB-5 Regional Center reform legislation is passed and that provision is contained in the final legislation, it would immediately result in a significant amount of visa numbers.

Recapture of unused visas is sadly not under consideration. The Cornyn Bill does propose 10,000 families, which would be an excellent start.