In FY 2024, for the second year in a row, the U.S. Department of State has issued all available EB-5 unreserved visas.
Given the growing demand for EB-5 visas, this news — with recent data about the best USCIS processing in five years — provides optimism for EB-5 investors and stakeholders.
The U.S. Department of State issued this statement: “The State Department, working in close collaboration with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is pleased to announce the issuance of all legally available visas in the Employment-Based Fifth Preference (EB-5) unreserved category for fiscal year (FY) 2024.”
This positive report contrasts fiscal years 2018 through 2022 when many thousands of EB-5 visas went unused, especially during the pandemic and the Regional Center Program shutdown.
Interested in EB-5 reserved visas?
Fiscal Year | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
EB-5 visas available | 9,940 | 9,961 | 10,076 | 11,094 | 18,622 | 19,987 | 13,993 | 11,431 |
Unreserved visas available | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | 13,594 | 9,515 | 14,169 |
Visas issued | 10,090 | 9,602 | 9,478 | 3,596 | 2,949 | 10,885 | 9,817 | 14,169* |
Visas unused | None | 359 | 598 | 7,498 | 15,673 | 2,709 | None | None |
Actual number of issued visas not yet published; this number may slightly exceed the available number.
Five years of wasted EB-5 visas (2018-2022)
In 2018 and 2019, a relatively small number of EB-5 visas went unused. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a nearly year-long suspension of the Regional Center Program, saw thousands of visas go unused and wasted over three years. In total, 25,880 EB-5 visas went unused between fiscal years 2018 and 2022.
Better EB-5 processing begins in 2023
With the COVID pandemic officially ending and the reauthorization of the EB-5 Regional Center Program, the Department of State fully issued all available EB-5 visas in 2023 — for the first time since 2017.
How EB-5 yearly limits are determined
The annual limit for EB-5 visas is 7.1 per cent of the worldwide employment limit, often around 140,000 visas. This means that in a standard year, there will be about 10,000 EB-5visas. Because of the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA), 68 per cent of all EB-5 visas are available for unreserved visa categories, with the remaining 32% reserved for the set-aside categories (rural, high unemployment, and infrastructure).
In some years, the employment-based total is higher thanks to the spillover of unused family-based visas.
Additionally, the RIA established provisions that carry over unused reserved visas to the reserved category the following year. If unused in the second year, they carry over to the unreserved category in the third year. If they are unused in that third year, they are then lost forever.
When will new unreserved visas be available?
A new supply of unreserved EB-5 visas is available at the start of each fiscal year. FY 2025 begins October 1, 2024.
For more visa issuance data (up to FY 2023), see Suzanne Lazicki’s article “What the Report of the Visa Office 2023 shows about unreserved EB-5 backlog status for China, India, and ROW.”