Most recent EB5 visa usage shows that investors and families from China were issued 8156 EB5 visas in 2015, or about 83.5%. It also shows that only 99 visas were issued to direct investment(create a company where 10 or more US workers are hired); the super majority of China EB5 visas were issued to regional center investment applicants and their families.
2015 December Asylum Data
USCIS released its asylum processing data. Based on this information, San Francisco asylum office continues to approve most applicants, about 67% approval rate. Los Angeles Asylum Office approved about 48%, while New York office approved about 25%.
Please see the chart below for details.
EB-5 News: Regional Center based program extended to 9/30/2016 with no changes
The Congress did not reach an agreement on the reform of regional center EB5 program. Instead, it simply extend the program to 9/30/2016.
Reform is for sure to come, just when and what.
If you are interested in investing in regional center project in order to obtain EB5 green card, you have a little bit of more time to evaluate your options.
EB5: USCIS I-829(removal of Condition) data
USCIS just released its most recent data available for I-829, removal of condition for EB5 applicants. The table below shows that USCIS has only denied 11 I-829 petitions, which is a very small percentage of all I-829 adjudicated in 2015. This is a great news for all EB5 applicants.
Petitions by Case Status Petition by Entrepreneur to Remove Conditions
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
1 Petitions Received 391 437 768 2345 712 1217 2516 2767
2 Approved 161 350 274 1067 736 844 1603 1067
3 Denied 69 57 56 46 60 44 178 11
4 Pending 454 735 1167 2395 1013 1345 2075 4049
In 2015, USCIS received 14,373 I-526 petitions; USCIS approved 8,756 and denied 1,051. As of September 30, 2015, there were 17,367 I-526 petitions pending. Based on I-526 filing trend in the past two months, we believe the pending I-526s will be around 20,000 at this time.
From 2008 to the end of 2015 fiscal year, USCIS has approved 6,102 I-829 petitions and denied 521 I-829 petitions, or about 7.8% denial rate. This is not too bad for an 8 year period.
New proposal on EB5 reforms may become law soon
A bipartisan group in Congress has reached an agreement to change the current EB5 laws. Here are the main points. It is expected to pass Congress soon, maybe next week as the current regional Center law will expire on December 11, 2015.
Extend the program through September 2019;
Provide increased authority to DHS to deny or terminate applications where there is fraud, criminal misuse, or a threat to public safety or national security;
Establish an “EB-5 Integrity Fund” in which regional centers and investors would pay fees to be used by DHS to conduct audits and site visits to detect and investigate fraud in the United States and abroad;
Require background checks of regional center and project principals;
Require more disclosures to investors regarding business risks and conflicts of interest;
Require more oversight of projects and closer monitoring for securities compliance;
Strengthen the incentives for investment in distressed areas so more capital investment reaches urban poor and rural areas, as Congress originally intended;
Raise the lower investment threshold to $800,000 to ensure more money goes to the areas that need it, and provide a mechanism for automatic adjustments going forward;
Improve how jobs are calculated to ensure that EB-5 projects truly create the statutorily required 10 jobs per investor;
Improve accountability and transparency by requiring that DHS employees document certain communications and by prohibiting preferential treatment;
And decrease petition processing times, which have been plagued by massive delays, by providing premium processing and requiring fees be adjusted to the rate necessary to achieve efficient processing.
Most recent EB5 application trend
USCIS just released its most recent I-526, EB5 application data.
The chart shows that as of now, USCIS has more than 17,000 I-526 application pending; it has approved 8,756 I-526 applications in 2015 fiscal year and denied 1,051 I-526 applications for the same time period.
Congress extends EB5 regional center law to 12/11/2015
At least until 12/11/2015, all regional center based visa applications or adjustment of status applications will be adjudicated without delay.
After 12/11/2015, there is strong likelihood that the Congress will amend the existing regional center law. Among other changes widely expected are investment amount increase, stricter source of fund review and tougher TEA designation.
If you are in the process of applying for regional center based EB5 application, you must act now.
Latest News: US Senate proposes to extend the EB5 regional center law to 12/11/15
EB5 regional center law will expire on 9/30/2015. At this time there are no pending legislation to extend the law. This afternoon, the US Senate proposes to temporarily extend the law to 12/11/2015, the same day of the federal government budget expiring date.
It is unclear if the house will follow the suite, which is likely though.
2 marriage fraud clients got their green cards back
Last week in two separate hearings, our clients got their green cards back after their applications were granted by immigration judge.
Both of them(unrelated cases) admitted that they had engaged in marriage fraud. Their previous lawyers had asked them to continue to lie about their marriages in court . If they followed that bad advise we are sure their application will be denied.
We are specialized in such marriage fraud cases. We welcome the opportunity to represent you if you are unfortunately in removal proceedings for any reason, especially for marriage fraud.
Asylum Office interview schedules(nationwide)
As of August, 2015, the asylum offices of the USCIS released the following interview schedules:
Arlington office I-589 filed on or before 8/2013
Chicago Office filed on or before 5/2014
Houston 4/2014
Los Angeles 8/2011
Miami 2/2013
Newark 6/2013
New York 11/2013
San Francisco 8/2013
AAO decisions on various application appeals
Administrative Appeals Office(AAO) released data on all appeals from 2011 to 2014. The left columns show the type of application; FY 2011 means fiscal year 2011; then the chart lists dismiss; sustain and remand.
AAO is the highest office inside the US Immigration for certain types of applications. Other types of applications not covered in this list are within the jurisdiction of the Board of Immigration Appeals(BIA). In some cases an applicant/petitioner may take the case to federal court if they lose at AAO or BIA level.
Judge granted SEC motion for Preliminary Injunction Against Yang Bingqing
We went to the federal district court in San Francisco yesterday to observe the first hearing in SEC v. Luca International Group and Yang Bingqing, et al. The hearing was to hear SEC's motion for preliminary injunction against all Luca entities, Yang Bingqing and other defendants.
Prior to the hearing, all defendants except Yang had stipulated to the injunction and the judge had entered order against them.
Judge granted SEC's motion at yesterday's hearing against Yang Bingqing and at the request of the SEC and Yang's attorneys, judge ordered the parties to negotiate how Ms. Yang could use her money to pay her attorneys. The SEC lawyer initially asked the court to freeze all of her funds so that she could not even has money to pay her lawyer. Ms. Yang was also ordered to get all of her money outside of the U.S. back to the United States.
Below is the minute entry after the hearing.
Minute Entry for proceedings held before Hon. Charles R. Breyer: Motion Hearing held on 9/2/2015 re 13 MOTION for Preliminary Injunction and Related Relief filed by Securities and Exchange Commission. Motion is granted, parties are to negotiate the issue regarding funds for attorney fees. SEC to submit a new proposed order. Matter continued to 10/9/2015 on the motion to stay which was previously noticed for hearing.
Court Reporter: Rhonda Aquilina.
Plaintiff Attorney: John Yun, Sheila O'Callaghan.
Defendant Attorney: Garrick Lew.
Yang's lawyer filed a motion to stop the SEC lawsuit against Yang on the ground of her fifth amendment right against self incrimination due to the pending grand jury investigation. A hearing has been set for this motion for October 9, 2015. SEC will oppose Yang's motion.
Investor's visa news
Our office just learned that EB5 visa numbers for china born applicants will make very slow movements in the months ahead. It is anticipated that on October 1, 2015 the cut off date will be October 8, 2013(I526 filed on or before this date may file I-485 or proceed to visa interview in Guangzhou). It is further anticipated that by September, 2016, the cut off date will be around May, 2014(applicants with May, 2014 priority dates may file I-485 or proceed to visa interview in Guangzhou)
Most recent data shows that 98.6% of EB5 applicants filed their application(I526) based on investment with regional center projects; only about 1.4% applicants made direct investment. 86.5% EB5 applications are filed by China born applicants.
in quarter 3 of 2015 fiscal year, there were 2,473 I-526 applications received by the USCIS; for the first 3 quarters of 2015, there are about 7,723 I-526 applications received by the USCIS.
As of July 31, 2015, the USCIS has about 13,500 I-526 applications pending adjudication.
On average the USCIS can process about 1,000 I-526 applications. Therefore it may take more than 14 months for the USCIS to just clear its current workload.
On average, the USCIS receives 1,000 I-526 applications per month.
As the September 30, 2015 deadline(regional center law expires) approaches, it is anticipated that the Congress will extend the law without much changes for 90 to 120 days while a more comprehensive reform of the regional center law be worked out by members of the Congress.
If you are still in the process of deciding, you should not waste any more time before the regional center law and the investment amount finally are changed to the worse.
Asylum Interview May Take 2-3 Years
USCIS Asylum Office just released a chart showing the interview scheduling of its 8 asylum offices.
This chart will be updated monthly.
Based on the chart, if you filed your asylum application on or before July 2013 from San Francisco area, you may get an interview notice. That is to say, the waiting time is about 2 years.
If you live under the jurisdiction of Los Angeles, you may have to wait for 4 years before you can see an interview notice.
Scheduling information for other offices:
Arlington: filed on or before August, 2013.
Chicago: filed on or before may, 2013.
Houston: filed on or before April, 2014.
Miami: filed on or before February, 2013.
Newark, NJ: filed on or before April, 2013.
New York, NY: filed on or before July, 2013.
The priority of the interview is for those who received interview notice but were rescheduled and asylum application filed by children,
Then the Asylum Office uses first-in first-out policy.
DHS plans to expand the 601A waiver
Department of Homeland Security just published a proposed rule change to expand the current 601A waiver.
DHS proposes to expand its current provisional waiver process in two principal ways. First, DHS would eliminate current limitations on the provisional waiver process that restrict eligibility to certain immediate relatives of U.S. citizens. Under this proposed rule, the provisional waiver process would be made available to all aliens .
Second, in relation to the statutory requirement that the waiver applicant demonstrate that denial of the waiver would result in “extreme hardship” to certain family members, DHS proposes to expand the provisional waiver process by eliminating the current restriction that limits extreme hardship determinations only to aliens who can establish extreme hardship to U.S. citizen spouses or parents. Under this proposed rule, an applicant for a provisional waiver would be permitted to establish the eligibility requirement of showing extreme hardship to any qualifying relative (namely, U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident spouses or parents).
Once the new rules become effect, any family based immigration applicants will be able to file for 601A waiver based on extreme hardship to their USC parents/spouse or their LPR parents/spouse.
Parents be aware: if your child entered the US illegally you may be held responsible
Under the US immigration law, anyone at any time "knowingly has encouraged, induced, assisted, abetted, or aided" others to enter the US illegally may be liable under the law. If parents did the above to help their children enter the US illegally this law also applies. Simply giving money for the children to enter the US will qualify under this law.
We have seen several cases where parents either took their children to the US and left them here without proper visas or provided material support for their children to enter the US illegally. When they later applied for immigrant visa, the US consulate refused their visa applications.
There are ways to deal with this problem if you have competent legal counsel to assist you.
President's immigration Order has been suspended
President Obama on Monday confirmed the bad news for up to 5 million illegal immigrants in this country: He has called a halt to Department of Homeland Security preparations to shield them from the threat of deportation because his executive orders have become seriously bogged down in a court challenge.
EB5: will the death bell ring soon?
Two leading senators have just introduced S.1501 that aimed at extending EB5 regional center law(which will expire9/30/2015) to 2020. That's good.
The bad: Lots of restriction and limitations. For example, the requirement to pre-file each offering together with SEC registration, limiting credit for job creation based on the percentage of the alien’s investment in the capital stack, and responsibility to control the activities of independent third parties overseas) apparently apply only to Regional Center offerings. Direct investors would share the increased investment amount ($800,000/$1,200,000) and more limited TEA definitions (a single high-unemployment census tract, or rural area, or closed military base). The bill also doesn’t include any promise to grandfather petitions or applications that were filed under requirements in place prior to the bill becoming law, so past as well as future investors could be affected.
If these changes become law, the EB5 regional center law as we know it now will no longer exist. The proposed changes will make the operation expense of the regional centers very high and the requirements to invest in TEA and to create the requisite jobs very difficult, not to mention the increase of the minimum investment amount.
If these changes become reality, the EB5 industry will be damaged beyond recognition and as a result, fewer regional centers will be operating and fewer investors would want to seek immigration through the EB5 program, although direct investment EB5 may see a jump.
New EB5 processing data
From January to march, 2015, the USCIS received 2309 I-526 applications. It approved 1978 and denied 273. The approval rate is 88%.
For the same time period, the USCIS received 693 I-829, application to remove the condition. It approved 269, denied 2. It had 3524 I-829 application pending as of march 31, 2015. The normal processing time for I-829 is more than 1 year.
The above information suggest that the approval rate for both I-526 and I-829 are very high and the pending cases have been on the rise.
In addition, the latest information from all sources indicate that the minimum investment amount will be increased very soon, possible after October 1, 2015.
Conclusion: If you are still thinking about EB5, now its time to act.
Please contact us if you are interested in our service on EB5 and any other types of US immigration applications.
EB5 Investment amount will likely be increased soon
In a letter written by Secretary Johnson of the DHS to the Congress, the Secretary urged the Congress to increase the amount of EB5 investment, both in TEA or targeted areas and other areas, because the $500,000/$1,000,000 were set by law more than 25 years ago. The Secretary also informed the Congress that USCIS is revising the regulation to increase the investment amount. He stated, however, that he wants to see the increase is written into law by the Congress.
It seems, based on all information available, the increase of the EB5 investment is nearly certain in 2015 or early 2016.
The Secretary also asked the Congress to increase the investment amount each year thereafter based on consumer index.
If you are still hesitating about EB5, you should act now to avoid higher investment requirement.