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The Request for Evidence is no longer the step that comes before a denial. USCIS rewrote its evidence guidance on 5 August 2026, applied it to petitions already pending, and quietly removed the extra fourteen days it used to give filers overseas.
The 2024 USCIS fee increase was not struck down. A court stayed its EB-5 portion, USCIS went back to charging $3,675 for Form I-526E and $3,750 for Form I-829, and the regulation on the books still shows the higher numbers nobody collects.
USCIS guidance now tells officers to treat adjustment of status as discretionary relief an applicant must earn, which raises the risk on the Form I-485 leg of a concurrently filed EB-5 case. The Form I-526E petition and the priority date are unaffected. Investors already out of status face the hardest choice, because departing for a consular interview can trigger a three year bar.
EB-5 requires $800,000 in a Targeted Employment Area or $1,050,000 outside one, documented lawful source of funds, and at least ten full time jobs for US workers. Investors receive two year conditional residence before applying to remove conditions. Set-asides for rural, high unemployment and infrastructure projects now drive where most capital goes.
A U in the EB-5 Visa Bulletin means every visa number in that category has been used for the fiscal year, so no green card can be issued until the new allocation begins on 1 October. Petitions keep being adjudicated and priority dates are unaffected. What stops is issuance abroad and approval of adjustment of status inside the country.
India's EB-5 demand has outrun the 7 percent per country ceiling, so the unreserved category already carries a cut-off date for Indian nationals. The rural and high unemployment set-asides created by the 2022 reform are why new Indian investors still see a short queue. Those reservations are fixed in size, and filings keep climbing.
The Visa Bulletin reports visa use rather than filings, so a current EB-5 category can conceal months of accumulated demand. This page explains how to read a bulletin like the May 2026 one for pressure signals and which queues absorb demand first. It also places the 30 September 2026 filing deadline against the visa queue.
Retrogression means a cut-off date moves backward, and EB-5 is exposed because supply is fixed near 10,000 visas a year while demand stays invisible until it converts into visa use. Reserved categories are held open by carry forward rules as much as by low demand. Filing early locks in a place in line and nothing beyond that.
EB-5 cut off dates advanced in 2026 because visa numbers had to be used within the fiscal year, not because the queue got shorter. Aggressive forward movement usually pulls in a wave of new demand, and retrogression follows. Filing locks in a priority date, the current investment amounts and the grandfathering deadline, so the window matters more than the headline.
South American EB-5 demand is rising because visa numbers stay current across the region while two dates now shape filing decisions. The grandfathering deadline of 30 September 2026 protects petitions filed on or before that day, and the first inflation adjustment to the $800,000 threshold is scheduled for 1 January 2027. Brazil supplies the largest share of investors, with Colombia climbing steadily behind it.
The March 2026 Visa Bulletin moved the Dates for Filing cut-off for mainland China in the unreserved EB-5 category from 22 August 2016 to 1 October 2016, an advance of 40 days. It lets a narrow group of pre-2022 Chinese investors start document work or file for adjustment of status. It says nothing useful about how fast the rest of the China line will move.
The IIUSA Industry Forum is the EB-5 trade association's annual policy conference, built around advocacy, compliance, data and investor market sessions. The audience is regional centers and advisers, not individual investors. This entry explains what each thread covers and what an investor should extract from it.
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