Myth: Immigrants can use EB-5 as a shortcut to “buy their way” to the front of the visa line.
Fact: While EB-5 may be the fastest path to a green card for many investors, lengthy U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) processing times, a visa backlog for Chinese-born investors, and a mandatory two-year conditional residence period extend the EB-5 timeline to upwards of five years for most investors.
Use of EB-5 visas does not impact visa backlogs for other visa categories and does not let EB-5 investors use the program as a shortcut.
While unused EB-5 visas can be reallocated to other employment-based immigration categories, visa numbers allocated to EB-5 form such a small segment of all available employment-based visas (10,000 out of 140,000, or about 7%) that reallocation is unlikely to significantly impact visa availability for other categories
Though both EB-5 and H-1B visas are related to employment, EB-5 visas have no impact on H-1B visa availability. H-1B is a non-immigrant visa category, and availability is not impacted by issuance of employment-based immigrant visas, like EB-5.
[1] 8 U.S.C. §1153 (b)
In a series of recent blogs, we explored common EB-5 myths to reveal the facts about the EB-5 program:
- U.S. Citizenship is not “for sale”
- EB-5 is not an immigration shortcut
- EB-5 investors are extensively vetted
- EB-5 funds are heavily scrutinized to prevent money laundering
Contact Us
NES Financial welcomes your questions and opinions. Allow us to address your business needs by contacting us. We look forward to hearing from you!
For more information on NES Financial, follow us on Facebook ,Twitter, and LinkedIn!