Introduction
Peter Calabrese (00:00:06)
Hi. Welcome. My name is Peter Calabrese. I am CEO of CanAm Investor Services. CanAm Investor Services is the FINRA-registered, wholly owned broker-dealer affiliate of CanAm Enterprises, one of the largest and most successful regional centers in the history of the EB-5 program. I am very pleased to once again be joined by our friend, Mr. Matthew Galati. Matt is the principal and founder of Galati Law and a leading expert in this space. Matt, welcome. Good morning.
Matthew Galati (00:00:31)
Great to be back. This is my fourth time. Last time you said that if I make it to five, you are going to get me a green jacket. So I would like you to send me the address of your best tailor in New York, along with your credit card number.
Peter Calabrese (00:00:52)
We will cross that bridge when we come to it. We are going to have to pick some pretty dynamite topics to earn that fifth one. The reason we are here today is to educate our client base and your client base on an important EB-5 topic that has not been discussed enough: although the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act was passed in 2022 and has brought significant improvements to the program, the program itself has been authorized only through a specific time frame. While it has been reauthorized through September 30, 2027, the really important date that has not been widely discussed is September 30, 2026. That is the date by which EB-5 petitions must be filed in order to be grandfathered under the Reform and Integrity Act. Matt, can you explain the difference between those two dates and why September 30, 2026 is so critical?
EB-5 History and the Regional Center Program
Matthew Galati (00:02:05)
I was a history major in college, which gives me license to jump into situations like this and put EB-5 history into context. For the uninitiated, the EB-5 program has been around since 1990. The Regional Center program is slightly younger. It was a standalone program for two years, and then in 1992, the Regional Center program was founded. The government has always taken the position that the Regional Center program has an expiration date. So from 1992 onward, the Regional Center program has always been living on borrowed time. We have never had permanent authorization, and investors have always been keen to get their filings done before the program would expire.
Matthew Galati (00:02:52)
For most of the program’s history, extensions to the Regional Center program were not particularly dramatic. From 1992 through 2012, which was a presidential election year, EB-5 received overwhelming congressional support, sometimes unanimous. Then starting in 2015, a significant scandal involving a different regional center attracted Congress’s attention. That center no longer exists, and some of those involved went to jail. That prompted Congress to say they needed to look more closely at this program and enact legislation that protects investors acting in good faith. Congress moves slowly. So while there were serious rumblings about reform starting in 2015, they did not come to fruition until 2022. The industry had to live through constant short-term reauthorizations during those seven years. Sometimes they were a year, sometimes six months, sometimes a couple of days. Sometimes the program lapsed entirely. We would go to bed on a Friday night and wake up Monday morning and the program was not there.
Matthew Galati (00:04:53)
For the most part, EB-5 has been durable, without significant interruptions to investors’ ability to immigrate to the United States, through June 30, 2021. That is when everything changed. From July 1, 2021 through March 14, 2022, the EB-5 Regional Center Program had no explicit statutory authorization. Regional centers continued operations, and people were still trying to move forward, but it was a very confusing and anxious time. And then in March 2022, we got the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act, which provided a new foundation for the program: a new minimum investment amount, new oversight requirements, expanded investor protections, and so on.
The Grandfathering Provision and Why September 30, 2026 Matters
Matthew Galati (00:05:56)
To confirm what Peter said: the EB-5 Regional Center program is authorized through September 30, 2027. We are recording this in July 2025, so that is about 26 more months. But the date that is going to matter most to many investors is September 30, 2026, a full year before the program expires. The reason for this comes from a provision in the RIA known as the grandfathering provision.
Matthew Galati (00:06:38)
Let me take you back to the 2021 lapse. Shortly before Congress reauthorized the program, USCIS communicated to stakeholders that if Congress did not act soon, all pending I-526 petitions and pending immigrant visa applications would be denied because, in their view, there was no statutory authorization. A number of attorneys, myself included, were scrambling, filing lawsuits to protect people. Fortunately, all of that became moot when Congress passed the RIA. At the time, the grandfathering language in the legislation was not entirely clear. Now it is very explicit. If you want to avoid the situation those investors faced during the lapse, you need to file your I-526 on or before September 30, 2026, one full calendar year before the program expires in 2027.
Peter Calabrese (00:08:00)
That is a hugely important point. One of the things that came out of the RIA that was not talked about enough is how the grandfathering provision addressed a question that had existed through every single short-term renewal. Investors with pending petitions always had a background worry: what happens to my application if the program changes? The assumption was always that Congress would act in good faith, but it was never made explicit. The RIA changed that, which was a significant protection for everyone who had been waiting through years of uncertainty.
Matthew Galati (00:09:28)
Exactly. And to put another point on it: when it became clear that our informal assumptions were not necessarily going to hold, when USCIS was quietly telling stakeholders that people were going to get hurt if Congress did not act, that was genuinely frightening. We are fortunate that the RIA gave us, at least for people who file before September 30, 2026, a clear protection. Even if Congress does not take further action and we have a very uneventful October 1, 2027 onward, people who filed before that date will be protected.
Peter Calabrese (00:10:34)
There are active advocacy efforts to extend the program and we have very little concern that the program will not continue. But that is a separate discussion. What we are focused on here is why investors need to be aware of this deadline, because there are plenty of investors who can make decisions and move forward with an EB-5 investment within a matter of months.
The Real Timeline: Why Filing Early Is Critical
Matthew Galati (00:11:18)
The short end of the timeline to complete an EB-5 filing is sometimes faster, but realistically many clients take 6 to 8 weeks once they are fully committed. And we have both seen clients who took upwards of 14 months from initial conversation to investment. That is the full window we are talking about for the grandfathering deadline. September 30, 2026 is important not just as a legal deadline but as a practical one. Filing before that date means your petition carries all the protections, transparency, and benefits of the RIA. Filing after that date removes those grandfathering protections.
Peter Calabrese (00:12:38)
Immigration is one of the most significant decisions in a person’s life. Other than getting married or having children, it is hard to think of something bigger. It takes time to make the decision. It takes time to evaluate different regional centers and projects. And then once you are committed, it takes time to liquidate assets, move money between accounts, or wire funds from abroad. You cannot just decide over lunch to sell your house and have the money in your account by 5 p.m.
Matthew Galati (00:13:45)
Right. And there is really no reason to wait until after September 30, 2026. Filing before that date preserves the grandfathering. Why would you give that up voluntarily?
Historical Precedent: What Spikes in Demand Look Like
Peter Calabrese (00:14:18)
Before we move to practical preparation, I want to give some historical context, because we have both lived through several of these deadline surges. Looking at data from USCIS filings, ahead of the September 30, 2015 deadline, petition volume jumped from roughly 3,000 filings per quarter to nearly 7,000. That put enormous strain on the entire industry.
Matthew Galati (00:17:36)
That is exactly right. I was at a large law firm at the time. We had an EB-5 team of around 30 people and just about all of us were in the office very early in the morning and staying very late at night. I have vivid memories of that period. The volume of petitions filed in a very short window created real bottlenecks, not just for law firms but for every part of the process. After the September 30 extension to December 11, 2015, volume dropped briefly and then spiked again in November and December. September 30, 2016 brought another surge. You see this repeating EKG pattern when you chart it out.
Matthew Galati (00:21:29)
I will say this plainly: whether you care about the history or not, September 30, 2026 is going to produce another massive spike in demand. If you have the interest and the capacity to get started now, you should do that rather than waiting until next year. If you wait until September 2026, you will not have the same access to attorneys, to projects, or to the administrative bandwidth needed to support a well-prepared filing.
Risks of Last-Minute Filing
Peter Calabrese (00:16:05)
There are two compounding risks to waiting. First, your priority date matters. Filing at the beginning of September 2026 versus the end of September 2026 could have a real impact on your visa wait. Second, service providers, including attorneys like Matt, have limited bandwidth. During a rush, you may not get access to the professional you want, or to the project you were most interested in. Our projects at CanAm fill quickly under normal conditions. In a rush period, that is even more pronounced.
Matthew Galati (00:22:27)
And beyond access, there are operational risks to filing at the last moment. We see USCIS reject filings in the mailroom when there are technical deficiencies, even when everything is done correctly. Checks listed as missing even when attached. FedEx shipments delayed by weather. Planes diverted. Wires reversed by banks. If you are filing at the last possible moment, you have no margin for any of those errors, whether they originate with a service provider, a government office, or an act of God.
Matthew Galati (00:25:11)
I can give you a concrete example. In November 2019, ahead of the minimum investment increase from $500,000 to approximately $900,000, everyone needed to get their petition in before that date. We were fortunate not to have any delivery or clerical issues. But we received calls afterward from investors whose petitions were rejected by the mailroom. Those investors then faced a nearly doubled investment threshold. That is the kind of outcome you want to avoid at all costs.
Practical Preparation Steps
Peter Calabrese (00:27:31)
The biggest thing we emphasize across all of these conversations is prior planning, and how consistently it is underestimated. The core principles are straightforward: choose a qualified immigration attorney, choose a reputable regional center, and then evaluate specific projects within that center. But those basics take time, and there is a significant amount of financial and logistical preparation on top of them.
Matthew Galati (00:28:24)
The heaviest lift is usually sorting out the source of funds. Most EB-5 investors are not investing every last dollar they have. They are investing a portion of their net worth, and real choices need to be made: do you take a loan against your home equity, sell property abroad, liquidate vested shares, or use a gift from a family member? Each of those routes has tax implications that your immigration attorney will not be able to advise on directly. You will want a qualified CPA or tax advisor involved. There are also timing decisions: adjustment of status versus consular processing, and which fiscal year to accept residency. These are all questions worth working through well before September 30, 2026.
Peter Calabrese (00:31:28)
For Chinese and Indian investors in particular, visa retrogression is a serious planning consideration. If you are eligible for concurrent filing, you want to do that while your visa status is current. We may see retrogression in some categories in the next fiscal year or into next calendar year. And historically, we know that large filing spikes around deadline dates have led to prolonged retrogression. Investors who filed around September 30, 2015 are, in some cases, only now getting the opportunity to immigrate to the US. Filing earlier means a better priority date and a shorter wait.
Matthew Galati (00:33:46)
If you were born in Iceland, this is probably not your most pressing concern. For investors from China and India, it is significant. There will be a cutoff date. Filing today gives you a meaningfully better position than filing on September 29, 2026.
What Happens After October 1, 2026
Matthew Galati (00:35:11)
The program will still exist for another year after September 30, 2026. But petitions filed after that date will not carry the grandfathering protections. If Congress decides not to extend or revamp the EB-5 program before the September 30, 2027 expiration, investors who filed after the grandfathering date could face real uncertainty. Historically, the program has always been extended, and I genuinely believe it will be again. It has brought too much benefit to the United States to simply be allowed to die. But I do not want to be alarmist. I want to be prudent. Filing before September 30, 2026 is the prudent course.
Matthew Galati (00:36:05)
One more item worth noting: the RIA includes a provision that the minimum investment amounts will be raised by the inflation rate. The first adjustment is currently scheduled for January 1, 2027, before the program expires on September 30, 2027. If you want to invest at the current $800,000 minimum, that is another deadline to factor into your planning.
Closing Thoughts
Matthew Galati (00:36:55)
There is an old proverb, I believe it is Chinese, that says the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. You are not doing yourself any favors by procrastinating on this.
Peter Calabrese (00:37:21)
We do not want to create alarm. The program is authorized through September 2027 and you will have the ability to move forward with an EB-5 investment. But you should understand the different rights that come with filing before versus after September 30, 2026. Thank you, Matt. Great to have you back as always.
Matthew Galati (00:37:41)
Thanks for having me. We will see if I can get to five and earn that green jacket.
