Visas and the queue

Visa set-asides

Also called reserved visas, set aside, 20 10 2.

The reserved slices of each fiscal year's EB-5 visa numbers: 20 percent for investment in a rural area, 10 percent for a high unemployment area and 2 percent for infrastructure projects, so 32 percent reserved and 68 percent unreserved.

What it decides

The reservation comes off the top of each fiscal year's EB-5 allotment, which is why a rural investor can be current while the unreserved queue for the same country sits years back; the Department of State gives each set-aside its own line in the employment-based visa bulletin chart. The statute calls these numbers reserved rather than set aside. Unused reserved numbers stay inside their own category for the immediately succeeding fiscal year, and only those still unissued at the end of that second year go to unreserved EB-5, which USCIS describes as a release during the third fiscal year. They do not pass to the wider employment-based pool. Adjudication order is a separate question. USCIS must prioritize petitions for rural areas, and its Investor Program Office assigns rural Form I-526E petitions first in first out ahead of everything else. Grouping the remaining non-rural queue by subcategory, rural standalone Form I-526, high unemployment, infrastructure and unreserved, is something the office says it may do given resources and visa availability, not a fixed four-way pipeline an investor can count on.

Governed by Percentages: 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(B)(i)(I), items (aa) to (cc). Carryover and later general availability: 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(B)(i)(II)(aa) and (bb) (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1153&num=0&edition=prelim). Rural priority processing: 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(ii)(I). USCIS, About the EB-5 Visa Classification, last reviewed 18 November 2025 (https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-fifth-preference-eb-5/about-the-eb-5-visa-classification). USCIS Policy Manual Volume 6, Part G, Chapter 1, Purpose and Background (https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-6-part-g-chapter-1). USCIS EB-5 Questions and Answers, Inventory Management (https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-fifth-preference-eb-5/eb-5-questions-and-answers). Department of State Visa Bulletin, employment-based chart, cited without a link because travel.state.gov refuses scripted requests.

Where this is explained properly

Pages here that go into visa set-asides rather than mentioning it.

Related terms

Rural areaOne of the two routes into a targeted employment area: an area that is both outside every metropolitan statistical area and outside the outer boundary of any city or town of 20,000 or more people.
High unemployment areaOne of the two routes into a targeted employment area: a census tract, or contiguous census tracts, that the Secretary of Homeland Security designates as a high unemployment area because the weighted average unemployment rate across them is at least 150 percent of the national average. The other route is a rural area.
Infrastructure projectA second route to the $800,000 EB-5 investment amount, available only through the regional center program, in which a governmental entity is itself the job-creating entity and contracts with a regional center or new commercial enterprise to receive the investors' capital as financing for maintaining, improving, or constructing a public works project.
Targeted employment areaA targeted employment area, or TEA, is a rural area or an area the Secretary of Homeland Security has designated as a high unemployment area, and an EB-5 investment placed in one requires $800,000 of capital rather than $1,050,000. An investment in an infrastructure project reaches the same $800,000 by a separate route without being a TEA.
Visa BulletinThe Visa Bulletin is the monthly Department of State publication that reports, by preference category and country of chargeability, which priority dates have reached the front of the immigrant visa queue.

Checked against primary sources on 6 August 2026. Back to the glossary