On November 18, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that due to a recent court ruling, the fees for the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program will revert back to the fee standards in place before March 31, 2024. This change has been effective since November 12.
The Colorado District Court issued a ruling on November 12 regarding a lawsuit related to the fees for the EB-5 program, mandating a suspension of the new fees that were set to take effect on April 1, 2024.
While the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) do not agree with the court’s decision, they are in the process of implementing it, as stated in the announcement.
Since November 12, USCIS has been accepting fees based on the standards that were in place before March 31, 2024. These fee standards are now listed as “Current Fee” on the USCIS website, while the fees set to come into effect after April 1, 2024 are categorized as “Previous Fee”. Petitioners and applicants are advised to pay fees according to the “Current Fee” table.
Although USCIS started accepting fees based on the “Current Fee” from November 12, they will also accept the “Previous Fee” for applications postmarked on or before November 6, 2025. Applications with a postmark date after that will be rejected if they include the “Previous Fee”.
The lawsuit was initiated by EB-5 investor Samantha Moody and other parties on March 19, 2024, challenging the policy of the Department of Homeland Security and USCIS under the Biden administration to increase EB-5 fees, which were set to take effect on April 1, 2024. The lawsuit argued that the significantly higher new EB-5 fee standards violated the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act passed by the U.S. in 2022.
During the course of the litigation, DHS and USCIS were implementing the EB-5 fees according to the standards set for April 1, 2024.
Compared to the fees in place before March 31, 2024, the EB-5 fees that took effect on April 1, 2024, saw a significant increase. For instance, the fees for I-526/I-526E immigrant investor petitions were $3,675 before March 31, but increased to $11,160 on April 1, tripling the previous amount.
On October 23 of this year, the Department of Homeland Security proposed new fee regulations to lower the EB-5 fee standards (aimed at the high fees set for April 1, 2024). The proposed new fee standards show reductions ranging from 15% to 60% across different categories compared to the April 1, 2024 standards, but most categories still remain higher than the fee standards in place before March 31, 2024.