Ismael Fernandez: America has hit the EB-5 cap for the first time (Ep. 23)

In this episode we talk to Ismael Fernandez, PhD on the EB-5 cap The United States has hit for the first time and what it will mean to Investment Immigration now and next year.

What we predicted in our podcast two months ago, along with many other experts, finally occurred. On August 23rd, the U.S. Department of State announced that the quota for EB-5 visas had been reached for China and therefore they will become unavailable for the rest of FY2014. This has many implications, but first, let’s define what this means. The U.S. government Fiscal Year runs from October 1st to September 30th of the following year, so FY 2014 ends on September 30th of 2014. This “unavailability” period will have a duration of about 5 weeks. The quota has been reached for Chinese nationals, but not for other countries. The quotas for all countries is 7% of the annual cap which is set by Congress at 10,000 EB-5 visas. This number, by the way, includes family members of foreign investors planning to migrate under the same visa. Once this cap of 700 EB-5 visas has been reached, unclaimed visas can still be used by applicants from the same country as long as the maximum allotment of 10,000 is not reached. Chinese investors have been applying for EB-5 visas above this limit for years, but it is not until now that it has a repercussion to them as the total number of EB-5 petitions worldwide was always below the maximum cap of 10,000. So, in essence, this is the first time that EB-5 petitions have reached 10,000 in a given Fiscal Year.