People are often surprised that applicants who started the EB-5 process years ago remain vulnerable to changing rules and conditions for visa availability. That equation looks disheartening when throughput falls (as has been happening for I-829, though I keep expecting the tide to turn), and impossible when both inventory and throughput are not in a trend but liable to go up or down by over 90% (the case with I-526). I have not been informed about IPO staffing allocation decisions, but feel that the public has a right to know whether a fee-funded agency is using fees to provide the paid-for service. Nikhil Wahi, the brother of the ex-Coinbase manager pleaded guilty in September to a wire fraud conspiracy charge. Case remains Pending | Lawfully. The magnitude of the negative impact depends on whether or not Department of State interprets and applies the new law as making all reserve visas practically exclusive to post-March 15, 2022 priority dates, and thus inaccessible to the 80, 000+ pending EB-5 applicants already queued up for visas. Maybe the backlog will get some supply relief in three years if DOS actually allows recapturing unused reserve visas.
So long as the EB-5 quota must be shared between principals and their families, it can sustainably incentivize fewer than 4, 000 investments annually. Are certain groups of I-829 intentionally left untouched or taking years of touch time for reasons related to policy or litigation? If the law changes midstream, too bad. What happens if owner leaves telegram group. Without country caps, applicants from all countries except China with pre-2022 priority dates who don't already have a visa by FY2025 could wait until 2032 before they can start getting visas. Their efforts topped out at about 450 decisions per month in Summer 2017. Minority Country Protection: The new law does not change the rule that protects low-volume countries with an annual 7% per country limit – a cap that high-volume countries may only exceed if and when there's insufficient demand for available visas. Concurrently filed 140(pp), 485, 765, 131 with medical on early February 2021 (PD) and I received my combo card few months ago.
After all this general talk, let's look at numbers. EB2-1 485 case remains pending?? | Lawfully. The darkest possible interpretation is that the "unused visa" provision was just put in the law to help ensure that no matter how interpreted – whether the unused set-aside visas are retained for new applicants or lost to other preference categories as usual — at least they'll definitely not be generally available to the China backlog at each year-end, and thus conveniently serve to lengthen wait times for redeployable Chinese investment. That "all except China, India, Vietnam" column in the I-526 filing trend gave hope to the China backlog and concern to people selling EB-5. The China backlog must particularly fight to lose as few visa numbers as possible, which means keeping their access to reserve visas if possible. Notes on what did and didn't change in the law, and what's ambiguous.
My best guess is that if Congress acts soon to eliminate country caps, and if the country cap elimination takes effect in FY2025 as proposed, then it will have the following EB-5 effects. This quarter's I-526 report is not very helpful, except as additional ammunition for Mandamus lawyers demonstrating to judges that USCIS self-reporting is confusing at best and unreliable at worst. I will now share some recent I-526 information from a source that I cannot name but believe to be solid. I do truly search for it. Morocco: Uyghur Activist at Risk of Extradition. ) Department of State already waves up minority-country EB-5 applicants as soon as they're ready by virtue of their nationality priority under the per-country limits, with no need for other priority. These charts show performance over the course of IPO's history. USCIS will likely continue to accept I-526 based on $500, 000 for some time.
"This year's Report examines the 'snowball effects' and pain points associated with backlogs and recommends actions USCIS can take to address not only the human consequences suffered by applicants, families, and employers but also the detrimental impacts on the agency … This article examines how the agency arrived at the crisis of backlogs which is now threatening to overwhelm it and highlights some of the steps it is taking to overcome this challenge. " Short report: fantastic performance for I-485 at the California Service Center in Q4 (thanks to USCIS leadership for prioritizing EB visa issuance and to Congress for applying political pressure that proved effective! The report code explains that "D" means "Data withheld to protect applicant's privacy. " That shows strong demand for EB-5 at the $500, 000 minimum investment, a high level of industry preparation for the Behring court win, and optimism about regional center program prospects. I continue to update my Processing Data page with intel as I receive it on I-526 and I-829 processing. Thus the talking point that reserved visas should only apply "prospectively. " © 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Case remains pending telegram group blog. Tables can look boring, but persevere. While a relatively high in terms of percentage, Adjustment of Status EB-5 visas were still a very low number in FY2021 – the lowest in five years. Visa availability will be transparent and predictable. I transcribe comments on the ambiguities from Charles Oppenheim, recently retired from Department of State, at a March 22 webinar with Wolfsdorf Law. Robert Divine explains how the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act changed the EB-5 sustainment period, and the consequences for new investors and redeployment. As an aside, note that the historical PT page that I linked is now more timely and worth checking now than the regular processing times page, which has changed to a 6-month average method to help hide fluctuations.
I was encouraged to see a few more IPO job announcements this month, and look forward to seeing some results from their work in 2023/24 once they're hired and trained. Think about the analogous situation of gate announcements in the airport, and what such announcements mean for people who are not yet checked in and through airport security. Who benefits from the country cap law, and who would benefit from changing the law to eliminate country caps and let EB visa applicants flow in FIFO order? Investor Program Office Productivity. I have reached out to number of lawyers to ask for help to interpret what's happening here, and what might be done to hold IPO to account. Their feedback will naturally reflect their interests and perspective as regional centers who do choose to file I-956 to raise new capital going forward. Those in or approaching consular processing should be aware of the NVC Timeframes page, with information on process status and times. Case remains pending telegram group plc. That's the queue-cutting opportunity.
And what if backlog relief (queue elimination) were proposed together with TEA set-asides (queue-jumping)? "Processing times are defined as the number of months it took for an application, petition, or request to be processed from receipt to completion in a given time period. EB-5 demand from China was relatively early, thus now at the head of the line for any visas leftover after organically low EB-5 demand from other countries. The bright side is that consular problems affect not only EB-5 but also family-based visa issuance, and EB-5 benefits in 2023 from a share in FB visas that went un-issued in 2022 (as reflected in 2023's unusually high EB visa limit). The determining factor is IPO productivity in I-829 adjudications, which follows from the resources that they choose to commit to I-829, and the procedures that they choose to implement. But this time period represented dark pandemic days, and lingering Trump administration leadership on immigration. If that report is accurate, how few people must have been assigned to I-526 in July 2021, to result in an average of only 2 decisions and 6 total actions per working day?
Or, if new EB-5 usage expands thanks to "TEA set-asides" providing an exclusive path around backlogs for high-demand countries. The above-linked Bloomberg Law article reports (though without citing sources) a high rate of denial and dismissal for mandamus lawsuits. But in theory, the 11, 000 visa available for FY2020 should've been distributed first to all prepared applicants up to their 7% country limits, with the balance then leftover for the oldest i. Chinese applicants. If the entire system cannot be improved with sufficient resources to provide reasonable processing for everyone, then pressure will build to improve processing times inequitably for at least a few constituents. Would that TEA incentive be worth the trade-off a 2x to 5x increase to backlogged Chinese investor wait time expectations? It does not include EB-5 applicants with pending I-485 status adjustment petitions: a population in the thousands. The government doesn't report this valuable intel directly, but I can guess by looking at data for I-526 filings by country and by year, and thinking about where those petitioners must be today based on what I know about petition processing, visa issuance, and the visa bulletin to date.
However, past EB-5 investment must also weigh on the discussion. The list of areas where USCIS should but doesn't have public transparency include IPO leadership, I-829 performance, IPO staffing allocation, IPO training, the country composition of the I-526 inventory, the distribution of I-526 receipts by regional center, reasons for increasing denial rates, and I-485 processing for EB-5 cases, to name a few priorities. The remaining 2, 706 unused EB-5 visas in FY2022 were permanently lost to EB-5. And again, I think that's why it's going to be important to clearly interpret how you distinguish unused numbers. I-526 and I-829 processing productivity fell in FY2021, even below previous low levels. A quick roundup of significant EB-5 developments since last report – rather delayed, while I held out for good news. AOS visas between FY2020 and FY2021 increased 35% overall, but fell 21% for EB-5. Reading list: Fiscal Year 2023 Employment-Based Adjustment of Status FAQs" (09/08/2022) at A detailed and informative Q&A from USCIS about the specific processes involved in employment-based visa allocation. Waiting for large media downloads to finish ranks very low on the list of "The Most Exciting Things to Do Online". And now this quarterly report states that 50% of I-829 processed October to December 2020 took less than 31. I start with a focus on I-526 approvals, since that's what drives the EB-5 process. FY2022 EB-5 Visa Issuance and Wastage. X] As of March 30, 2021, USCIS reported 10, 309 I-829 petitions pending, of which over 90% were likely filed by regional center investors. If you want a good cry and to lose some hair, read the 132, 341 words that explain the budgeting methodology and assumptions.
The 40+ month processing times reported for EB-5 forms reflect the fact that IPO spent the end of 2021 working on a low volume of very old petitions,. USCIS has not yet decided whether it will take the position that RIA requirements, such as fund administrators and audits, apply to pre-RIA projects. The Justice Department indicted Ishan Wahi in July, alongside his brother and friend, in connection with an insider trading scheme to front-run listings of new tokens on Coinbase. Most important, we need to pour advocacy dollars and energy into getting any possible backlog relief for the oldest EB-5 applicants, who need it now more desperately than ever. Considering the factors summarized above, an individual I-526 or I-526E filed today may avoid an unthinkably long processing time if (1) IPO dramatically increases the amount and productivity of I-526 adjudication resources and/or (2) IPO implements exceptions to the nominally First-Come-First-Served order that benefit that particular I-526, or (3) that particular I-526 or a massive number of other petitioners give up and drop out of the process. … I do think that there potentially will be some changes, at least to the language to clearly identify what is meant. Form I-956K Promoter Registration. 5 months (i. filed since September 2018) and 50% of decisions were on cases that had been pending longer than 35. Today, $49 million of spilt I-526 filing fees call from the ground, asking why the United States government has assigned only 26 I-526 adjudicators to handle an inventory of over 13, 000 pending investor petitions, offers excuses rather than improvement plans for falling IPO adjudicator productivity, and manages I-526 inventory by defining a large percentage of the inventory as ineligible for processing (via the "visa availability approach"). The equation starts with the annual visa limit, then deducts all qualified demand from applicants at/under the per-country limit, and ends with a difference of "unused" numbers available for allocation to the oldest applicants regardless of per-country limit.
But, all other factors being equal, reserved visas in themselves (if genuinely reserved) certainly have a dreadful impact on the wait time equation for backlogged Chinese applicants. EB-5 raised almost $8 billion dollars in 2015 alone, from enough investors to claim at least five years of EB-5 visas. Actual estimates are tough, and the two-year guess looks relatively tolerable (still longer than I-526 should take, but about the outside limit of how long most EB-5 project developers and investors can imagine waiting in limbo). Specifically, it has not decided whether such regional centers will be terminated, whether they will have to file I-956H, whether they will have to file annual statements, or whether any of the RIA requirements apply to them. USCIS has edited the processing times report to report only outliers and only 6-month averages, officially publishes limited performance data only after a half-year delay (last published report was October-December 2021), and does not answer my FOIA requests. Now here's a version of the same slide, but marked up to show how the calculation would change with reserved visas — if reserved visas are indeed reserved in new categories and not accessible to pending pre-March 2022 priority dates. On the USCIS Processing Times Page, the current I-829 "Estimated Time Range" starting at 35. A rate of 100 approvals a month is still three times too low to avoid wasting EB-5 visas in a normal year, five times too low to avoid wasting visas this year, and ten times too low to provide timely processing for over 13, 000 pending I-526 petitions. As illustrated, processing volume remains not merely suboptimal, but almost vanishingly small. I saw this update on Christmas Eve and thought about leaving the nieces and nephews to report on it, but why? In previous years, spouses and children received an even larger percentage of EB-5 visas. It also strengthens our communities across the country by encouraging foreign direct investment and creating jobs. "
Download the Lawfully App now. That's confusing, but I think that there's room for interpretation, and it could be argued either way on this. The resources are available.
Photo via the BSP Lounge's Instagram page. The Times Square Ball Drop (New York City). With magicians, exotic animals, jugglers, and much more, make this a New Year's Eve to remember. Champagne and ball drop at 12:00 *Free drink at Rolling River and $5 off Paprika ticket price if you do both!
Course four, the last of the savory servings, is a Cornish game hen topped with cranberry-and-wild-mushroom dressing and pomegranate-molasses drizzle alongside a healthy glass of Beaujolais. Deer Mountain Inn (Tannersville): The cozy mountainside restaurant and lodge throws a two-part party, with a prix-fixe dinner from 5 to 9 p. ($50/person) followed by a Harlequin Masquerade Party ($150/person). Savor a prix-fixe menu to keep your energy up on the dance floor, and clink your glasses together in a cheers to the new year during the midnight champagne toast. On New Year's Eve, there's a lot going on in Catskill. Find Italian, Mexican, Asian food and more at Resorts World Catskills: For the perfect Italian-style steak and house-made pastas, head to Cellaio by chef Scott Conant. Online […]Find out more ». Events in the catskills this weekend. Of course, the Midnight Ramble Band will headline, preserving Helm's legacy of transforming countless lives with his music. If this dinner party is calling your name, don't wait to make a reservation. Take the whole family to the zoo, ring in the New Year, and get the kids to bed on time with "Noon" Year's Eve, complete with noisemakers, a dance party, and a ball drop countdown at noon and a sparkling juice toast! Every room is designed and fitted with modern, state-of-the-art amenities to keep you entertained indoors. Headlining the night is Hudson Valley's favorite reggae/ska band Big Takeover, which makes for a thrilling opportunity to witness this big-stage band in a more intimate atmosphere. Joining forces with @haveknife.
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Proceeds benefit the Newburgh LGBTQ+ Center. You can bring the under-twelve-year-olds for half price. Where to celebrate New Year’s Eve in the Catskills. A prix-fixe menu is available in case all that dancing makes you hungry. With over 150 live tables, 1600 slot machines, high-limit salon privets, and luxury loungers for private players, the casino at Resorts World Catskills offers limitless ways to have fun. NEW WORLD HOME COOKING Annual New Year's Eve Buffet and Gala | Saugerties. Bring lawn chairs or, better yet, blankets so you can get comfy! Adults pay $24 and kids pay their age.
December 31 and January 1. Bid Adieu to 2021 at Crystal Life Spa. July 4th -5 pm -Dusk: Cairo's 4th of July Celebration at the Park. If you're somehow still hungry after all those courses, there are late-night bites, and an open bar until 1am. Sign up required no earlier than 24 hours in advance. The Falcon celebrates the new year by having The Big Takeover and What? In a career that spans five decades, 23 albums and three Grammy awards; multi-talented singer, songwriter, and guitarist Tom Chapin has covered an incredible amount of creative ground. Prior to entry into Stangl Stage our show will require attendees to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test result within 72 hours of the event OR full COVID-19 vaccination (at least two weeks after final dose). Experience a premier fireworks display from the Walkway over the Hudson. New year's eve in the catskills full. In order of time zones, starting with those that ring in the New Year first, diners will work their way across the world; starting in Japan and traveling west until finding themselves where they are today, Callicoon Center, NY. Breakaway delivers a mix of rock, soul, and country with a lot of heart!
And celebratory desserts: seven layer dobos torte, ginger ice cream. Call 518-296-8000 and they'll save you a seat. December 31, 7:30pm. Where to watch 4th of July Fireworks in the Catskills: ULSTER COUNTY - 2019. Call 845-796-3333 to reserve tickets. COVID-19 PROTOCOL: We are committed to doing everything we can to ensure we can continue bringing safe and amazing comedy nights to our guests. Live Music: Bill's Toupee. New Years Eve Party/CANCELLED. Drinks: Dr Brown's: Cel-Ray,. Proof must be a photo or copy of negative test result or vaccination, or the original vaccination card. Families can choose from exciting outdoor adventures like nature hikes to scenic vistas, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, or sledding (provided they bring their own sleds). Winter menu, plus NYE specials a la carte. Spa treatments and offers available. 99 Per Person and $125 Discounted Room RateFind out more ».