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“ Under the RIA , there are an additional 10,000 visas allocated by the State Department , but there are now 3,200 visas set aside and these visas are under three brand new categories
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fill in the details of the painting . The federal agencies specialize in their respective areas of expertise and Congress delegates these powers to these federal agencies , which are all under the executive branch , under the powers of the President of the United States .
NEW EB-5 VISA CATEGORIES
Under the old EB-5 Pilot program , Congress authorized the State Department to issue 10,000 new visas each year ( from Oct . 1 to Sept . 31 on the federal fiscal year ) and out of these visas , 30 percent were set aside for TEA projects . The definition of TEA was either a region with an unemployment rate of 150 percent of the national average , or a rural area . Under old rules , both categories were considered a TEA , and every year 3,000 visas were set aside for the TEA category . Once those 3,000 visas were issued , the remaining visas would go back in the pool if they were not utilized . However , most of the projects were in a TEA – more than 98 %.
Under the RIA , there are an additional 10,000 visas allocated by the State Department , but there are now 3,200 visas set aside and these visas are under three brand new categories . The first category is rural with 20 % of the annual visas or 2,000 visas , the second category is high unemployment TEA with 10 % or 1,000 visas , and the third category is infrastructure with 2 % or 200 visas .
From what we as an industry have gathered , these brand-new visa categories are current , based on the State Departments visa bulletin . What this means is that new investors do not have to go to the end of the queue behind previous investors to get an allocation of visas . There are estimates that there are currently 30,000-50,000 investors in the queue and it is estimated that between 80-90 % of those in the queue are Chinese nationals who were born in Mainland China . It is important to keep in mind , however , that investors awaiting USCIS processing of their I-526 application will typically have to go to the back of the queue in order to get their I-526 application approved . During the Trump administration , however , the USCIS decided not to process Chinese born investors ’ applications because there were no visas available from the State Department , and these applicants were placed aside in a separate queue until visas became available . The USCIS is just now adjudicating applications that were filed by mainland Chinese investors in 2016 .
EXPEDITED EB-5 FILINGS
An expedite filing can be filed by individuals , given the individual investors ’ circumstances , or they can be filed by a project . Individual cases of an expedite can be due to financial hardship , humanitarian reasons , or to fix an error that was clearly caused by the USCIS . For example , one such humanitarian reason was doctors that were applying for work authorization during COVID could be granted an expedite in order to speed up their entry into the United States , in order to start their medical practice due to COVID humanitarian reasons to benefit local United States residents .
A project-level expedite however focuses more on the circumstances around the actual EB-5 project . The old USCIS standard was called the “ National Interest Exemption .” It entailed that the petitioner had to prove that the project at hand not only benefitted the local and state economies , but that the project had an impact on the overall nation , for example , for national security or other reasons why the project of a National Interest to expedite . Very few project were granted this expedite , and some abused the expedite status .
For that reason , the USCIS changed the expedite requirement to “ The Interest of a Federal Agency ,” requiring that projects file an Expedite application either at the time of the I-596 exemplar filing , or separately , explaining which federal agency or agencies ’ mandates the project is furthering . For example , if a project is building energy efficient buildings with micro-gridding and saving electricity and / or installing a large number of electric chargers within their development , and it is within the Department of Energy (“ DOE ”) mandates to create more energy efficiency and create more electric