The United States EB-5 is one of the most popular immigrant investor schemes in the world which started in the 1990’s, limited to 10,000 EB-5 visas every year. The scheme has received another extension until Dec 7, 2018 currently requiring a minimum of $500,000 investment. Proposed investment increase minimum investment level of EB-5 is $1,350,00 to $1,800,000
USCIS has published I-526 petition status for third quarter of 2018. The statistics reveal a dramatic fall in petitions. USCIS has only received 617 petitions for third quarter (apr-jun) compared to 1607 petition applications from the previous quarter, which is a 61.5% decline.
This decline is attributed to
- Extremely long wait times – for chinese is about 15 years, India about 6 years and Brazil is 1.5 years
- Rampant frauds including fraudulent securities offerings through EB-5.
For the fiscal year Q3 2018,
- 17,000 petitions pending
- 10,061 petitions approved (quota is reached)
- 1022 petitions refused (10% refusal rate
USCIS has also published a checklist on how to protect from fraud for new investors.
According to EB5 Daily For many years the EB-5 Program has been dominated by investors from Mainland China, but do to visa quota limits on countries, a backlog has caused the wait time for Chinese investors to exceed 14 years. As a result, many potential Chinese investors have taken notice and declined to pursue immigration through EB-5.
The Form I-526 is the first step in applying for EB-5 fifth preference. The I-526 Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneur is filed by the EB-5 investor to demonstrate that they are in the process of investing, or have already invested the required amount of capital in a suitable EB-5 project.
Number of EB-5 immigrant visas issued by the U.S. Department of State from 2010 to 2017
USCIS issued over the quota visas in 2014 and 2017. Approximately 85% of EB-5 green cards have been issued to Chinese nationals, according to Forbes.
