On Feb. 17, the U.S. Senate passed a Continuing Resolution to fund the government through March 11, 2022.  The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Continuing Resolution Feb. 8.  This gives Congress an additional three weeks to negotiate the outstanding funding bills for certain agencies and has averted a Feb. 18 federal government shutdown.  Congress did not attach an EB-5 regional center reauthorization bill to the Continuing Resolution. The next deadline for regional center reauthorization will be March 11, 2022.  At present, USCIS continues to hold in abeyance all regional-center-based I-526 Petitions and corresponding I-485 Applications. USCIS has not commented on holding the cases in abeyance since Oct. 4, 2021; however, no stakeholders have reported receiving any I-526 or I-485 denials at the time of this blog.

Stakeholders can urge their Congressional representatives to extend the regional center EB-5 program.  As we previously reported, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and its Advocacy Action Center, Stakeholders of the EB-5 Regional Center Program, have also created a short form to easily email or write to legislators for this purpose.