The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, April 2020 Visa Bulletin (View PDF) is now available.
FINAL ACTION DATES (CHART A)
The Visa Bulletin revealed the following final action dates for EB-5 visa applicants from the countries that are experiencing visa backlog:
China: May 15, 2015 (no movement from the previous Visa Bulletin); India: January 1, 2019 (advancing 10 weeks from the March Bulletin); Vietnam: February 8, 2017 (advancing 3 weeks from the March Bulletin)While the final action date for China remains unchanged after the significant advancement in the March Visa Bulletin, the final action date for India continues to advance at a promising pace. As indicated by Mr. Charles Oppenheim, Chief of Immigrant Visa Control & Reporting Division at U.S. Department of State, during the March 13 USCIS EB-5 Stakeholder Engagement (listen to the audio recording here): “… at this time, I believe that [the EB-5 final action date for] India will become ‘current’ sometime in the summer. And once it becomes current it would stay for the foreseeable future.”
As of April 1, 2020, Chinese, Vietnamese and Indian investors who filed their I-526 petitions on or before the new cutoff dates above will be eligible to schedule interviews with Department of State Consular offices and be issued conditional immigration visas to enter the U.S. or apply for adjustment of status if they are already in the U.S. All other countries remain current. The dates for filing of the EB-5 visa category on the April Visa Bulletin remain unchanged from the March Visa Bulletin.
Earlier this year, USCIS announced that beginning March 31, 2020, the agency will begin adjudicating pending I-526 petitions on the basis of visa availability rather than a first-in-first-out approach.
In addition, USCIS also confirmed that Chart B (Dates for Filing) on the monthly Visa Bulletin will be used to determine which I-526 petitions will be prioritizing for adjudication. Since the dates for filing for all countries except for China remain as “current” on the April Visa Bulletin, as of April 2020, only EB-5 investors from China with a pending I-526 petition will be affected by the new visa availability processing approach. That means, although EB-5 visa applicants from Vietnam and India are still subject to a final action date, investors from Vietnam and India with a pending I-526 petition will NOT be affected by USCIS’s new adjudication approach in the foreseeable future.