A preliminary ruling has been made by the federal court in the Northern District of California that reverses the USCIS decision in April that deauthorized existing EB-5 regional centers. Therefore, for the next few weeks, regional centers will be able to accept new EB-5 investors immediately and can file I-526 petitions under the EB-5 Reauthorization and Integrity Act of 2022 while the USCIS decides to appeal or creates new regulations.

The decision was largely based on the precedent that regional centers were previously allowed their status by Congress, and although this has lapsed from time to time the USCIS has never before forced existing, legally compliant regional centers to reapply. With the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 Congress created new admission requirements, but it did not specify whether existing RC approvals were still valid, so, for now, the agency must continue on the basis that they are.

EB-5 investors can invest $800K from Monday, 27th June. Under the new Integrity Act, an EB-5 Regional Center must only submit an ‘application for a particular investment offering’ prior to subscribing new EB-5 investors. New filings will need to meet the requirements of the new legislation, but once approved these investors will be grandfathered and processed regardless of changes in the law. The grandfathering clause in the statute also means existing investors do not need a regional center to be processed.

After a year of pent-up demand, it is expected there will a sharp increase in interest in EB-5 regional center projects over the next few months — particularly for those EB-5 projects in urban targeted employment areas (TEAs) that qualify for a 10% visa set aside and in rural TEA locations that qualify for a 20% visa set aside and faster processing.

Faster processing for rural TEAs has been promised as part of the new Integrity Act, but the USCIS has not provided any guidance on what faster processing means in practice, so it will likely be a long time before this becomes clear.

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