U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced it would update its visa availability approach for managing the inventory of Form I-526, Immigrant Petition by Alien Investor, to promote greater efficiency.
USCIS will update its approach by grouping petitions with filing dates on or before Nov. 30, 2019, by new commercial enterprise within the queue of petitions where the project has been reviewed and there is a visa available or a visa will soon be available. This approach will enable USCIS to gain greater processing efficiencies and reduce backlogs. Assigning multiple petitions associated with the same new commercial enterprise to the same adjudicator(s) will allow adjudicators to process them more efficiently.
USCIS is issuing this alert and updating its approach based on factors specific to the Form I-526 petition inventory, including to help address the backlog of pending petitions. For more information, please see the Update to Visa Availability Approach for Form I-526 page on the EB-5 Resources page.
