On June 16, 2020, Mr. Charlie Oppenheim, Chief, Visa Control and Reporting Division, U.S. Department of State, spoke at the IIUSA webinar and had some important updates about visa usage this fiscal year, the possibility of continuing to have forward movement for visa backlogged countries (India is now current!), and allocating at least 4200 more EB-5 visas for the next fiscal year. He also indicated that Hong Kong will continue to be treated as an independent country on the visa bulletin unless an act of legislation changes this. He also indicated that his previous projections about the time for new applicants to wait in line for a visa was wrong for India, which is the reason why India is now current, and he does not think it will be facing any visa backlog in the near future.
This statement also implies that his projections about the wait times for Mainland China and Vietnamese applicants were also wrong. These are very exciting news for us and for the industry.