CADC on EB-5 Visa Numbers: Wang v. Blinken

Wang v. Blinken

"The Immigration and Nationality Act makes a limited number of visas available to foreign investors who create jobs in the United States. It also grants investors’ spouses and children the “same status” and “same order of consideration” for those visas as the investors. 8 U.S.C. § 1153(d). When the Department of State calculates how many visas it may issue for foreign investors, it includes an investor’s spouse and children in the total count. So, for example, if there are 10,000 investor visas available in a year, and if the first 3,000 of those visas go to investors with 7,000 spouses and children, no additional visas are available to foreign investors. The Plaintiffs challenge this counting practice. They claim the Department should have stopped counting family members against the total number of investor visas after Congress relocated the controlling text within the Act in 1990. We disagree. The Act required the Department’s approach before 1990, and it still does. Congress did nothing in 1990 to change the text’s meaning. We therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal of the Plaintiffs’ lawsuit."