Fredrick W Voigtmann
Immigration AttorneyEB-5 immigrant visas are limited by the EB-5 law Congress passed in 1990. All employment-based and family-based preference immigration is subject to limits. For EB-5, the annual limit is 10,000 immigrant visas (currently counted as the investor, spouse and any dependent children) per fiscal year. There is a set aside of 3,000 immigrant visas (at a minimum) for regional center EB-5 immigrant visas. Also, no single country can use up more than 7.1% of the available immigrant visas, but any unused immigrant visas (i.e., if no other country uses up at least 7.1%) can "flow up" to a single country using more than 7.1%. For example, China was able to use 85% of the available EB-5 immigrant visas in 2014 because no other country was close to the 7.1%. As for the rest of Fiscal Year 2015, the U.S. Department of State has estimated that that an immigrant visa number cut-off (retrogression) will be necessary no later than July 2015 for China-born applicants. For the rest of the world, there has been no such announcement, so it is likely that persons born in Mexico and Brazil will not be affected; they will have EB-5 immigrant visa numbers available or "current" for the remainder of the fiscal year.
