While India and China are facing retrogression under the EB-5 visas, the remaining countries remain unaffected and continue to have current status in this category
Hyderabad: The wait for Indians willing to invest in the United States in return for US residence through the EB-5 visa gets longer. The United States has implemented retrogression — dating backward — for Indian applicants, pushing back the priority date by more than two years to November 1, 2019, and impacting thousands of Indian aspirants.
As part of this decision, the priority date for India, which was January 1, 2022, went back two years and two months to November 1, 2019. China in the EB-5 Unreserved category has been retrogressed by nearly two and a half years to January 22, 2014.
The EB-5 visa programme allows foreign investors to secure a US green card by investing money into US businesses, which will bring employment to at least 10 people in the United States. The visa has seen huge demands from India and China.
While India and China are facing retrogression under the EB-5 visas, the remaining countries remain unaffected and continue to have current status in this category.
Retrogression means the country has pushed back the application priority dates to accommodate the inflow of visas, and the priority date required for a visa to be available has moved backward instead of forward.
For example, if the bulletin initially showed that applicants with a priority date of January 2022 were eligible to apply, but the date was retrogressed to November 2019. Then, only the applicants with a priority date of November 2019 or earlier can process their visa applications.
This increase in visa applications forced the US state department to push back the visa priority dates, so that they can manage the allocation of available visas.
"This retrogression is a huge setback for Indian investors who were expecting to settle in the US," said Dinesh Makkula, an immigration consultancy agent. "With the waiting period now retrogressing to 2019, many applicants will have to reconsider their plans. This decision also signals the possibility of further delays in the future."
Not only EB-5 visas, EB-4 visas have faced retrogression over the past four months, with April 2025’s bulletin declaring the visa “Unavailable” for Indian applicants. The US administration stated that EB-4 visas will not be issued for the remainder of the 2025 fiscal year. They said they will begin issuing new visas at the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, 2025.
EB-4 visas are granted to immigrants who are members of a not-for-profit religious organisation in the United States, and special individuals who generally do not fit the usual visa groups.
For EB-4 and EB-5 visa types, the retrogression has been in progress since US President Donald Trump took charge in January 2025. In January 2025, the final action dates for EB-4 and EB-5 visa applications were February 1, 2021, and April 1, 2022, respectively. By April 2025, EB-4 visa applications became unavailable and EB-5 visas were retrogressed to November 1, 2019.
Immigration experts have pointed out that this move aligned with US President Donald Trump’s stringent stance on immigration policies. While the US administration has cited high demand as the reason for the retrogression, critics believe this is a step towards tightening immigration rules under the current government.
The US administration also stated that if the demand for EB-5 visas continues to rise, applicants all over the world might face restrictions in the future.
