What impact could HR-392 have on EB-5?

It will increase the waiting lines for countries other than China and Vietnam.

H.R. 392 should not impact the EB-5 category should it ever be enacted; however, there are proposals that would possibly do away with the per-country limitation, and if such a provision were enacted, that could help Chinese applicants for which there is a significant backlog, but it could create a smaller backlog for applicants from certain other countries.

The issue of impact has been widely debated but nothing concrete has been agreed upon. Although, it is being speculated that the length of waiting period for some countries, partly China, may be reduced by proposed regulations, but nothing has been done. The HR-392 does not appear to be directly related to EB-5 and it may end up having negligible impact.

The Yoder Amendment would remove the 7 percent per-country limitation that creates bottlenecks for countries with larger populations. The provision does have protections for the first few years, but its bottom-line impact would be to help reduce the very long waiting lines for Chinese applicants and long waiting line for Vietnamese, and it would therefore increase the waiting line for all other nationalities.

If this HR-392 is passed, it will have significant, negative implications for non-Chinese EB-5 investors. Although the bill does include a transition-phase provision for the rest of the world&#39s applicants, this provision is limited to the EB-2 and EB-3 categories. For EB-5 investors, the elimination of the country cap would mean that China-born applicants who have older priority dates, over countries like India, would take all to the front of the line for EB-5 visas, while the rest of the world would stand in line behind them. According to the 2017 report, the Chinese applicants in the system constituted over 75 percent of all the EB-5 applications.