The EB-5 set-asides: rural, high unemployment and infrastructure

Three reserved slices of one annual limit

The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 rewrote the fifth preference and reserved part of each year’s allocation for particular kinds of investment. Of the EB-5 visas made available in a fiscal year, 20 percent are reserved for investments in a rural area, 10 percent for investments in an area of high unemployment, and 2 percent for investments in an infrastructure project.

These are reservations out of the EB-5 total, not additions to it. The fifth preference remains a fixed share of the worldwide employment-based limit, so a visa allocated to the rural reserve is one the rest of EB-5 does not get. That is why each reserve has a row of its own: they are separate pools with separate demand, and one can run short while another does not.

The three reservations are at section 203(b)(5)(B)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-103, division BB). USCIS: EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program

What "unreserved" means

Whatever is not reserved is unreserved: the remaining 68 percent of the annual EB-5 allocation, and the row the bulletin labels accordingly. An investor whose project does not qualify for one of the three reserves is in that queue.

The per-country ceiling still applies on top of all of this. Being in a reserved category does not exempt an investor from country of chargeability, and the bulletin publishes the same five country columns for a set-aside row as for any other.

Chargeability follows country of birth, in a set-aside row as anywhere else. Which country column applies to you

How carry-over works

A reserved visa that goes unused does not vanish into the general pool at the end of the year. Visas reserved under a set-aside and not used during a fiscal year remain available in that same reserved category for the immediately following fiscal year. Only if they are still unused after that second year do they become available to the unreserved fifth preference.

The practical effect is a two-year cushion in each reserve, and a lag of the same length before unused reserved numbers reach anybody outside it. A reserve can therefore be carrying more numbers in a given year than its headline percentage suggests.

The carry-over rule is at section 203(b)(5)(B)(ii) and (iii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended by the same Act. Public Law 117-103, division BB

Why a set-aside row often shows C

A cut-off exists to ration numbers: one is published for a category and country when known demand exceeds what is left of that category’s annual limit, and where it does not, the cell reads C and every priority date qualifies. A reserved pool has its own allocation and its own demand, so it can be current in the same month that the unreserved row carries a cut-off years back. Nothing about a reserve makes it faster in principle. The two rows are simply not drawing on the same numbers.

The bulletin publishes cut-offs, not reasons. Where a set-aside row is current, the issue does not say why, and neither does this site. What the archive here can tell you is what every row has actually read, month by month, which is a different and more checkable thing.

The transcribed value for every issue on record, on both charts and in all five country columns. What each EB-5 row has actually read

What the set-asides do not do

• They do not create extra visas. Every reserved number comes out of the EB-5 total.
• They do not suspend the per-country limit, and they do not change country of chargeability.
• They do not change the priority date. It is still the date the qualifying petition was properly filed.
• They do not guarantee that a row which is current today will stay current. A category with no cut-off can acquire one in any later issue, and several on this site have.
• They are not chosen after the fact. Which reserve applies, if any, is a question about the project, settled with the petition rather than with the bulletin.