In the October visa bulletin, which signals the start of the 2026 fiscal year, the Department of State (DoS) announced changes for Indian and Chinese investors. Updates included final action dates for Indian investors and filing dates for Chinese applicants in the Unreserved category.
For Indian petitioners, the Final Action Date advanced to Feb. 1, 2021. This means that Indian applicants with a priority date before this day are eligible to receive their EB-5 visas. Meanwhile, Chinese EB-5 applicants now have a filing date of July 1, 2016. This change primarily causes delays for applications submitted after this cutoff date.
The final action date for Chinese investors remains Dec. 8, 2015, and the filing date for Indian applicants continues to be Apr. 1, 2022.
The filing date affects visa submissions to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the National Visa Center, while the final action date pertains to visa issuance. These dates are critical for processing immigrant visas and adjusting status.
Importantly, applicants from the Rest of the World (ROW) countries in the set-aside and unreserved EB-5 visa categories are not affected by these changes, as their dates remain current. There is also no sign of the expected backlog in set-asides that the DOS cautioned in early 2025.
Why is the change in the October Visa Bulletin important?
Every October, the U.S. immigration calendar resets, which includes the annual allocation of visa numbers for various U.S. visa programs, including the EB-5 program.
With this reset, fresh visa numbers become available. For fiscal year 2026, the limit for annual employment-based preference immigrants is set at a minimum of 140,000. The EB-5 program is expected to receive approximately 10,000 of these visas, of which around 3,000 will go to set-aside categories (rural areas, high-unemployment areas, and infrastructure projects), while the remaining 7,000 will be allocated to the Unreserved category.
In fiscal year 2025, which ends every Sept. 30, USCIS allocated a total of 7,066 visa numbers to the EB-5 reserved visa categories. This figure included 3,658 unused visas from 2024, as Congress allowed them to carry over.
Although the October visa bulletin does not specify the fate of the unused visas in 2025, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has cautioned that USCIS must take steps to prevent this issue from recurring and ensure that allocated visa numbers are utilized efficiently.
In related news, the Department of State (DOS) has confirmed that EB-5 sister programs EB-1, 2, and 3 have already reached their annual caps for 2025.
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