U.S. State Department Halts Issuance of EB-5 Visas for Fiscal Year 2024.
The U.S. State Department, alongside U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, has announced that all legally available visas under the unreserved EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program for Fiscal Year 2024 have been issued. As a result, embassies and consulates have been instructed to pause the issuance of immigrant visas in these categories until the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, 2024.
Each fiscal year, approximately 140,000 immigrant visas are allocated for employment-based categories, which include EB-1 through EB-5 visas. Within this allocation, around 10,000 visas are set aside for the EB-5 investor visa program. These visas are also subject to per-country limits as outlined in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The act sets the annual cap for EB-5 visas at 7.1% of the total employment-based visas available, with 68% of this allocation reserved for unreserved visa categories such as C5, T5, I5, R5, RU, and NU.
Moreover, the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 allows any unused reserved EB-5 visas from Fiscal Year 2022 to be rolled over into unreserved categories for Fiscal Year 2024, contributing to the current situation where all available visas have now been exhausted.
The suspension will remain in place until the new fiscal year begins, at which point visa issuance is expected to resume.