EB-5 I-526E Processing Order: What the USCIS Inventory Management Update Means

A new USCIS update on EB-5 I-526E processing order reaffirms a commitment to prioritizing rural petitions — but doesn’t offer definitive clarity on how petitions will be adjudicated. That ambiguity may be the point.

When the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA) was passed, EB-5 stakeholders were excited about the news of reserved visa categories that could allow investors from retrogressed countries to pursue EB-5 faster. In particular, reserved rural visas (20% of the yearly visa total) could boost EB-5 investment in communities that have struggled to attract capital by offering priority processing to entice investors.

However, the law wasn’t too specific about what priority processing would look like. According to the bill, the Secretary of Homeland Security “shall prioritize the processing and adjudication of petitions for rural areas.” But the bill also says the Secretary “may process petitions in a manner and order established by the Secretary.”

In what way was the Secretary going to prioritize rural petitions? And does the second statement allow the Secretary to choose not to prioritize those areas if desired? While we saw some evidence that I-526E rural petitions were adjudicated faster than those in other categories, there was no published rule.

A recent USCIS EB-5 inventory management update provides more information on how prioritization will work. How much this update actually tells us, unfortunately, is open to interpretation.

What USCIS Says About the EB-5 I-526E Processing Order

An update to the USCIS EB-5 Q&A page now contains a section titled, “Inventory Management,” which says the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), after the changes of the RIA, “requires us to prioritize processing petitions for rural areas” and to “prioritize making decisions on certain targeted employment area (TEA) petitions over non-TEA petitions.”

As for how these requirements will be met, the Q&A states that effective March 30, 2026, USCIS will generally assign Form I-526 and Form I-526E under a first in, first out (FIFO) approach that seeks to balance these considerations by:

• Assigning Form I-526E petitions for review after official decisions are made on the associated Form I-956F;
• Assigning Form I-526E rural petitions by a FIFO approach as priority for anticipated fiscal year rural visa usage; and
• Assigning other Form I-526E and post-RIA Form I-526 petitions by a FIFO approach after the Form I-526E rural queue is empty or when USCIS determines enough decisions have been made from that queue.

USCIS also notes that, considering resource and visa availability, the Immigrant Investor Program Office (IPO) may group petitions in the non-rural I-526E and post-RIA I-526 petition queue by visa subcategory,  rural post-RIA I-526, high unemployment area (HUA), infrastructure, and unreserved, and assign petitions by sub-queue in FIFO order to facilitate usage of reserved visas in line with congressional intent.

What This Confirms: I-526E petitions will not be reviewed until after the associated I-956F petition is adjudicated. Rural I-526E petitions will be prioritised over all other petitions. Beyond that, the language introduces significant flexibility — and ambiguity — for USCIS

Beyond that, it gets less clear. Non-rural petitions “may” be grouped and adjudicated by subcategory, and these non-rural petitions will be reviewed once the rural queue is empty “or when we determine we have made decisions on enough petitions from that queue.” There’s a lot of wiggle room in those statements, which may be the intent: USCIS is giving itself options.

What does the new I-526 processing system mean for EB-5 applicants?

Some industry leaders have offered analysis of the language in the new Q&A section that sheds some light on what it does and does not tell us. While it’s helpful to know that I-526E petitions will be held until I-956F approval and then adjudicated on a first-in, first-out basis, as Suzanne Lazicki points out, “it’s not quite FIFO because naturally I-956F have to be decided before I-526E can be decided.” Investors will therefore have to wait through two different queues (one for I-956F approval and another for I-526E approval), making it harder to judge one’s actual place in line.

Lazicki pays particular attention to the phrase, “or when we determine we have made decisions on enough petitions.” The “or” in this sentence means we can’t say all rural petitions will be processed before other categories. Similarly, we can’t say for sure that IPO will group non-rural petitions by subcategory and adjudicate those categories in a specific order, only that they “may” do so.

“What a significant ‘or’!” says Lazicki. “If most HUA and Infrastructure I-526E may sit untouched until the Rural queue is empty, then HUA and Infra I-526E processing times could become indefinite (or at least very long, considering the 4,000+ Rural I-526E pending and new receipts incoming daily). On the other hand, if ‘enough petitions’ means ‘enough petitions to apply for one year’s supply of Rural visas,’ then the trigger to stop Rural processing has likely already been met for FY2026, and HUA and Infra processing volumes may be about [to] jump ahead.”

Key point on visa availability: while the reserved categories are still current, that only means that there are visas available. The visa bulletin tells us that there are visas that have yet to be issued, not how many applicants are currently in the pipeline moving toward the visa stage.

As Michael A. Harris explains, “The government has not yet been forced to impose a cut-off date because too few applicants have reached the visa-ready stage.” The reason the rural and high-unemployment categories are current is “not because demand is small, but because many investors have not yet become visa-ready, and that depends on whether USCIS can move enough cases through the gates of I-956F and then I-526E.”

If, as Lazicki suggests, USCIS chooses whether to work on the rural queue or other categories based on a single year’s supply of rural visas, this could prevent the rural category from quickly becoming retrogressed. But if all rural applications, of which there are already thousands, are adjudicated first, then the rural category could become retrogressed while other categories end up with thousands of unused visas.

This is the reason for that all-important “or.” USCIS wants the ability to manage visa queues based on what happens, not what is anticipated. “It confirms rural is meant to be an explicit priority lane,” says Harris. “USCIS is telling the market: we will prioritize rural, but we also reserve the right to stop prioritizing rural once we think we’ve done ‘enough,’ even if rural cases remain in line.”

It is still likely that rural I-526E applications will be adjudicated faster than non-rural, but investors can’t be sure their petitions will be reviewed before “enough” is reached for any particular year. But as Harris notes, given that unused visas can eventually be lost, it’s imperative that USCIS improve its system.

“The reserved categories can remain Current even while thousands of filings accumulate, and without deliberate management, the system can fail to convert statutory availability into actual usage in a predictable way,” he says, cautioning that a category remaining current is not a signal of how fast one might actually get a visa: “Faster processing does not create more visas. It can simply reveal, sooner, that more people are waiting in line than the annual limits can accommodate.”

While there is plenty of vagueness about the Q&A, it tells us two things: 1) the method for determining which applications are adjudicated (and when) has changed, and 2) the EB-5 visa category in which a person submits is of large importance as to when the petition will be reviewed. But given that we don’t know the triggers for when USCIS will “move on” from a certain category (or if they’ll be grouped at all), should investors make their selections based on priority processing alone?

Probably not, since USCIS could choose to move on from the rural queue at any time, reducing the speed advantage it provides. But it also doesn’t make sense to avoid rural projects, because for all we know, USCIS may adjudicate every single rural application before even touching other categories.

Luckily, most investors don’t make their decisions based on priority processing alone, so this can merely help with setting expectations amid a much wider range of EB-5 due diligence concerns. Getting more information is a good thing, though this may be too little, too late when it comes to the RIA era.

What can we expect from the EB-5 industry under this new process?

While it’s nice that USCIS is demonstrating its commitment to rural EB-5 projects and its desire to follow the rules put forth by the RIA, the law has a ticking clock. The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act was passed four years ago, and its grandfathering date is coming up on September 30th, 2026. Authorization for the EB-5 Regional Center Program expires in 2027, and we don’t know what the next version of the program will look like.

We may see an influx of rural EB-5 investment this year as applicants try to take advantage of priority processing before the grandfathering deadline, but after September 30th, investors and issuers will need more information to confidently proceed. Extending the deadline to September 30th, 2027, would be a start, and reauthorizing the EB-5 Regional Center Program would be even better, but what we really need is a permanent version of the Regional Center Program.

Permanent EB-5 reauthorization would not only put an end to the periodic anxiety of cut-off dates and Congressional lobbying, but would also give EB-5 stakeholders confidence that the rug isn’t going to be pulled out from under them. Instead of spending our time worrying about reauthorization, we could work on achieving better communication with USCIS on issues like its  I-526E processing system. It’s taken USCIS this long to get the most out of the RIA; we shouldn’t just abandon it before it reaches its full potential.

JTC is leading the charge for permanent reauthorization of the EB-5 Regional Center Program before the cut-off date of September 30th, 2027, preferably before the grandfathering deadline of September 30th, 2026. Click the button below to learn more about why this beneficial program should be made a permanent part of U.S. law.

Read our insight on the case for permanent reauthorization