Last week, IIUSA submitted a list of questions to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Customer Service and Public Engagement Directorate in advance of its March 3, 2017 EB-5 Stakeholder Engagement. You can review the questions submitted below.
The upcoming EB-5 Stakeholder Engagement is part of USCIS’s ongoing efforts to enhance dialogue with stakeholders. During the first part of this engagement, USCIS officials will provide EB-5 program updates. The second part will be a question-and-answer session.
Questions for Consideration
- Are USCIS employees subject to the January 23rd hiring freeze? If so, does this still allow for replacement of staff who have left since the transition?
- Due to the January 20th regulatory freeze, will there be additional commenting time for the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM) and Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM)?
- Is EB-5 subject to the January 30th order to remove to regulations for every one new regulation created? If so, has Secretary Kelly developed a process for determining how this will be decided?
- Fees for the EB-5 Regional Center Program have gone up, there has been significant hiring of new employees for the IPO in the last year, and yet processing times continue to go down. What is being done by the agency to effectively use our increased fees to decrease processing times?
- Is there a timeframe for ELIS to be reintroduced?
- What is USCIS’ intention with regard to the August 2015 Draft Policy memo on sustaining investment?
- Given that I-829 processing times are beyond 12 months but I-829 receipts are only valid for 12 months, is there a plan to update documents so they allow people to continue to document conditional residency without having to renew the I-829 receipts?
- How many I-526, I-829, and I-924s are currently pending?
- What is the formula for USCIS/IPO to calculate processing times? I.e. if a FRE is issued, how does that calculate into the average processing time?
- Can USCIS provide report on differentials in processing times for I-924 applications based on items such as if they are a new regional center, have an amendment for an existing center in connection with a new project business plan, pending approval of organizational changes to ownership, etc.
