On Friday, August 5th, 2022, WR Immigration and Banias Law filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of hundreds of Chinese foreign national plaintiffs requesting the court to compel the U.S. Department of State to authorize fiscal year (FY) 2022 EB-5 immigrant visa numbers be allocated to all plaintiffs and their families by September 30, 2022, and to process their immigrant visa applications promptly.
This lawsuit seeks to compel the State Department to follow the plain language of its own regulations and “allocate” the visas prior to the end of FY 2022. In the past, if visa quotas are not allocated prior to the end of a fiscal year, they are forever wasted. Once the visas are allocated, this complaint also seeks to compel the State Department to issue the immigrant visas at a later date after a consular officer has thoroughly vetted each visa applicant. This proposed modus operandi effectuates congressional intent to provide a fixed annual quota of visas.
Plaintiffs allege that this intent is being thwarted by the State Department failing to allocate the supply of available visas, causing “age-outs” of their children and unfairly prolonging the required time their EB-5 investment capital must be deployed.
Approximately 18,000 EB-5 visas were wasted last fiscal year and cannot be used anymore without Congressional action. In FY 2022, which ends this September 30th, over 11,000 immigrant visas should be available to China-mainland EB-5 investors, and it is almost certain most of these will be wasted unless WR’s complaint prevails.
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