EB-5: Every Set-Aside Is Current While India's Unreserved Category Is Unavailable

The September 2026 Visa Bulletin contains one of the sharpest splits anywhere in the employment-based system, and it sits inside a single category.

EB-5 unreserved is Unavailable for India. All three EB-5 set-asides are Current — for India, for China, for everyone.

The numbers, side by side

Final Action Dates, September 2026:

EB-5 category	Worldwide	China	India
Unreserved (C5, T5, I5, R5, NU, RU)	Current	1 Dec 2016	Unavailable
Set-aside — Rural (20%)	Current	Current	Current
Set-aside — High Unemployment (10%)	Current	Current	Current
Set-aside — Infrastructure (2%)	Current	Current	Current

An Indian investor in the unreserved category cannot have a visa issued at all this month, at any priority date. An Indian investor in a rural project is current. Same category, same statute, same investor — different allocation bucket.

Why the set-asides behave this way

The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 carved the annual EB-5 allocation into reserved slices: 20% for rural projects, 10% for high-unemployment areas, and 2% for infrastructure. The remaining 68% is the “unreserved” pool that everyone competed in before.

Two features of that design produce what you see above:

The set-asides are newer, so they have less accumulated demand. The unreserved pool carries a queue built over many years, including the large pre-2022 Chinese cohort. The reserved categories started from zero in 2022 and have not yet accumulated enough petitions to exhaust their annual slices.

Unused reserved numbers do not simply vanish into the general pool the same year. The carry-forward mechanics keep the reserved slices genuinely separate rather than letting the larger queue absorb them immediately. That separation is the entire point of the reservation, and it is why a category can be Current for India while its sibling is Unavailable.

The practical effect is that the set-asides have functioned as the open door for exactly the nationalities most backlogged elsewhere — which is close to what the 2022 Act was designed to do, though it is doing it more starkly than most people expected.

The catch that is easy to miss

Being Current is not the same as being fast, and it is not the same as being cheap or safe.

• The set-aside is a property of the project, not of you. You do not elect a set-aside on a form. The investment has to actually be in a qualifying rural area, a qualifying high-unemployment area, or a qualifying infrastructure project. The designation flows from the project’s location and paperwork.
• “Current” describes visa number availability only. It says nothing about I-526E adjudication times, which are the binding constraint for most investors right now.
• Current today is not current forever. The set-asides are Current because demand has not yet filled them. Demand is visibly moving toward them for precisely the reason this article describes. A reserved category that becomes popular will develop its own cut-off date.
• The September bulletin warned about EB-5 specifically. Section G cautioned that demand in the unreserved category could require retrogression or unavailability before the fiscal year ended — which is what you are seeing in the India row.

The chart designation makes this worse this month

There is a second layer, and it is the kind of detail that decides whether a filing gets accepted.

For September 2026, USCIS designated the Final Action Dates chart for all employment-based categories — not the more generous Dates for Filing chart.

That matters here, because on the Dates for Filing chart EB-5 unreserved for India is listed as 1 May 2024, not Unavailable. If Dates for Filing had been designated, a set of Indian unreserved investors could have filed an I-485 this month. Under the Final Action Dates designation, they cannot.

EB-5 Unreserved, India	September 2026
Final Action Dates chart	Unavailable
Dates for Filing chart	1 May 2024
Chart USCIS designated	Final Action Dates

The gap between the two charts is the difference between a filing window and no filing window, and the designation changes month to month. Always confirm it on the USCIS adjustment of status filing charts page before you file — see how to read the Visa Bulletin.

What October could change

October opens fiscal year 2027 with a fresh annual allocation. For categories that went Unavailable because an FY2026 pro-rated limit was exhausted — which is exactly why EB-5 unreserved India is showing “U” — a new fiscal year is the mechanism that ends unavailability. A date, rather than “U”, is the realistic expectation.

Two cautions. First, the October bulletin has still not been published as of 22 September 2026, roughly a week later than usual, so there is no October figure to plan against yet. Second, opening-month dates are typically set conservatively while the Department assesses FY2027 demand, and the per-country structural problem does not reset on a fiscal calendar.

For the underlying mechanics, see our EB-5 guide and the EB-5 rural set-aside guide.

This is general information, not legal or investment advice. EB-5 involves substantial capital at risk, and set-aside qualification is a project-level determination — verify it with an immigration attorney and independent project diligence, not from a bulletin table.