The Department of State which is responsible for allocating the green card numbers every year has announced that for the year FY2021, there will be an additional 100,000 green cards to be issued in the Employment based categories 1 through 5.
17,500 Total EB-5 Green cards for 2021
Annually 140,000 green cards are issued in the EB categories, but starting in October 2020, which is the start of FY2021 for new green card numbers, The projection is to have a total of at least 250,000 green cards for EB categories. 7% of the 250,000 are allocated to the EB-5 visa category. This works out to 17,500 green cards in the EB-5 category. Currently, the annual allocation for EB-5 green cards is around 10,000 per year. Addition of another 7500 green cards will most definitely be a welcome relief for Chinese, Vietnamese and Indian EB-5 investors.
Huge benefit for Indian & Vietnam Investors
Especially for Indian & Vietnamese EB-5 investors, this is the equivalent of almost reducing the wait time for Indians applying now to reduce their wait time by almost one year. I mentioned in my previous post that the reduction in issuance of family based green cards will result in those unused green cards being transferred to EB categories as per the guidelines of the INA Act.
Can continue into FY2022
There is also talk that a similar situation might arise in FY2022, where unused family based green cards in FY2021 will spillover into FY2022 EB categories. These multiple spillovers will reduce the retrogressed countries wait times significantly.
If you are a prospective Indian or Vietnamese EB-5 investor, this would be a great time to invest in the EB-5 program to take advantage of this increase in EB-5 green card numbers.
I am an EB-5 investor myself, contact me now on how I can help you with your EB-5 process and answer all you questions about the process and the available EB-5 Projects.