Expected US EB-5 retrogression for Indians and Vietnamese

Expected US EB-5 retrogression for Indians and Vietnamese

in January 10, 2019

It is no longer the Chinese applicants group suffering under the EB-5 program’s intractable retrogression nightmare; Indian and Vietnamese investors applying for an EB-5 program today can expect to wait for 5.7 and 7.2 years, respectively, to get their visas approved, according to an analysis by Mr. Charles Oppenheim, Chief of the Department of State’s Immigrant Visa Control & Reporting Division.

According to the reports stated under EB-5 Insights, Oppenheim shared the following wait-time estimates for applicants that filed their I-526 forms:

China Mainland: 14 years

Vietnam: 7.2 years

India: 5.7 years

*The current USCIS processing time for an I-526 is roughly two (2) years; there is no effective wait time between its approval and visa availability.

Furthermore, for the first time in history, Chinese investors no longer make up an absolute majority of EB-5 visa recipients; in the fiscal year 2018, the USCIS allocated 48% of such visas to mainland Chinese.

Vietnam reached its retrogression threshold – 7.1% of the 10,000 visas available per year – in early 2018 and has seen its wait-times shoot up as a result. Interest from Indians, one of the fastest growing applicant groups, has shot up from 1.7% of all applications in FY 2017 to 6.1% in FY 2018, indicating they are virtually certain to enter retrogression territory.