By Marta Lillo
All countries remain current except for Mainland China and India in the EB-5 Unreserved categories in September’s visa bulletin.
Mainland China’s final action date remains at Sept. 8, 2015, which has been the same since May; and India’s date is still April 1, 2017, which it has been since July.
Also, for the new set-aside categories, all countries are current.
Employment-based preference categories would reach their annual limits in September
In this bulletin, the State Department announced that employment-based preference category limits and the overall limit for the 2023 fiscal year would be reached by Sept. 30, suggesting a high demand for visas within these categories. This year, the limit was calculated to 197,071 visas compared to last year’s 281,507 overall visa limit.
“The employment-based number used by both USCIS and Department of State has been steady during the fiscal year. As a result, most employment-based preference category limits and/or the overall employment-based preference limit for FY 2023 are expected to be reached during September. If at any time an annual limit were reached, it would be necessary to immediately make the preference category “unavailable”, and no further requests for numbers would be honored,” the agency says.
The situation suggests that any applications that need to be processed or allocated visa numbers by the end of September would be queued for processing in the next fiscal year (FY2024), which begins on Oct. 1, when the number of visas reset.
According to Charles Kuck, EB-5 immigration attorney and managing partner at Kuck Baxter, it would not mean a significant delay for EB-5 applications.
“For EB-5, this reaching of available visa numbers means that at least for a few days ‘currently available’ means ‘not available,’ and they will have to wait until October 1, 2023, to get a final adjudication on their EB-5 based Adjustment of Status, but it should not mean any significant delay.”
Dan Healy, CEO of Civitas Group, adds: “It’s also possible that if an investor’s visa interview was scheduled for a September date when no visas are available, that interview would have to be rescheduled for after Oct. 1. For most investors, the likelihood is that they will not be affected. However, this ‘gap’ scenario has happened before, which can be a frustrating situation for investors.”
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