How does the per-country visa limit calculation work?

Federal law limits any single country to approximately 7 percent of the total worldwide employment-based visa allocation. The worldwide annual limit for all employment-based categories combined is approximately 140,000 visas. The per-country cap is therefore approximately 9,800 visas across all five employment-based categories (EB-1 through EB-5).

Within EB-5 specifically, the annual allocation is approximately 10,000 visas (including derivative family members). The per-country limit is applied to the total employment-based allocation, not to each category individually, which creates a complex interdependency between categories.

Unused visa numbers from undersubscribed countries can be redistributed to oversubscribed countries within the same fiscal year. This means the effective per-country limit can exceed 7 percent in practice, but the redistribution is unpredictable and depends on global demand patterns.

The set-aside categories created by the RIA have their own allocation (32 percent of EB-5 visas combined) and are not subject to the same backlog dynamics as the unreserved pool, which is why they remain current for all countries.