The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has requested that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adjudicate pending applications to prevent the loss of significant numbers of EB-5 visas as the end of the 2025 fiscal year looms.
As the end of the fiscal year nears on Sept. 30, there is a pressing concern regarding the optimal utilization of EB-5 visas.
What happens to unused EB-5 visas?
In a recent letter addressed to USCIS, AILA underlined a troubling trend observed in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, where only 5.1% (423) of the available reserved EB-5 visa numbers were used.
“This means that over 2,460 visa numbers from FY2023 were forever lost to rural reserved visa applicants, over 1,300 visa numbers from FY2023 were forever lost to high unemployment visa applicants, and over 200 visa numbers from FY 2023 were forever lost to infrastructure visa applicants. We believe this to be unacceptable and inconsistent with the clear congressional intent, as indicated in the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, which prioritized processing and incentivized investments in these categories,” AILA wrote in the letter.
In FY 2025, USCIS allocated a total of 7,066 visa numbers to the EB-5 reserved visa categories. This total includes 3,658 unused visas from 2024. Congress permitted these unused visas to carry over into the next fiscal year.
AILA stressed the importance of addressing this issue to prevent recurrence and ensure that the allocated visa numbers are utilized efficiently.
EB-5 attorney and AILA EB-5 Committee Chair, Jennifer Hermansky, cautioned against the potential waste of reserved visas at the end of the fiscal year.
“AILA hopes that we will not see visa waste for reserved visas as we did last year, which frustrates Congressional intent,” she said.
Meanwhile, U.S. immigration attorney Marjan Kasra posted on social media about the urgency of the matter: “These visas are critical for investors & underserved U.S. communities. Action is needed now.”
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