EB-5 Visa Issuance in March FY2025: Triple-Digit Monthly Growth Continues in Reserved Categories

Last week, the U.S. Department of State released its monthly visa issuance data for March 2025, revealing a 149% month-over-month increase in Reserved EB-5 visa issuance. This marks the sixth consecutive month of growth during the first half of FY2025. Unreserved EB-5 visa issuance also rebounded in March, rising 79% from February’s fiscal-year low. See Figure 1 for monthly EB-5 visa issuance trends in FY2025.   In total, 1,614 EB-5 visas were issued via consular processing in March, broken down as follows:

• 1,382 Unreserved EB-5 visas (Fisal-Year-To-Date visa issuance: 7,542, representing 64% of total visa availability in FY2025),
• 195 Reserved visas under the Rural Area category (FYTD visa issuance: 293 or 7% of the fiscal year total), and
• 37 Reserved visas under the High Unemployment Area (HUA) category (FYTD visa issuance: 142 or 6% of the fiscal year total).

The March data also showed a significant uptick in Reserved visa issuance to post-RIA applicants from China. A total of 185 Reserved EB-5 visas were issued to applicants from China in March 2025, a substantial increase from just 21 visas in February. Particularly, 88% (162 visas) of these were issued under the Rural Area category.