The IIUSA (the Regional Center trade association) conference last week was quite interesting. I co-chaired the conference which was attended by about 550 people from throughout the world. I met with many regional centers and Chinese migration agents among others.

I led the Immigration Law Panel which discussed cutting-edge issues including:

• Legality of revoking inactive regional centers;
• Job creation;
• Maintaining the investment, for example, when the project is sold or capital returned such as when a condominium project sells its units before the I-829 is decided; and
• Bond deals.

I learned the Department of State is opposing the argument that EB-5 dependents do not require a visa number. They apparently convinced the Department of Homeland Security not to concede this. However, the Department of State may be open to recapturing about 10,000 EB-5 visas that went unused in the past. I encourage you to contact your congressional representatives and senators and ask them to contact the Department of State, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Johnson to implement this policy.

In addition, the State Department Official stated that the EB-5 quota may backlog in the first or second quarter of FY2015 – not in May 2015 as previously predicted.