United States Court of Appeals FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT Argued January 7, 2021 Decided July 9, 2021 No. 20-5076 FENG WANG, AND HIS CHILD, GUANYU WANG, ET AL., APPELLANTS v. ANTONY BLINKEN, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE, ET AL., APPELLEES Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 1:18-cv-01732) Edward F. Ramos argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs were Ira J. Kurzban, John P. Pratt, and Helena M. Tetzeli. Matthew J. Glover, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Glenn M. Girdharry, Assistant Director, and Christopher A. Bates, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General. R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant Attorney General, entered an appearance. 2 Before: SRINIVASAN, Chief Judge, MILLETT and WALKER, Circuit Judges. Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALKER. WALKER, Circuit Judge: The Immigration and Nationality Act makes a limited number of visas available to foreign investors who create jobs in the United States. It also grants investors’ spouses and children the “same status” and “same order of consideration” for those visas as the investors. 8 U.S.C. § 1153(d). When the Department of State calculates how many visas it may issue for foreign investors, it includes an investor’s spouse and children in the total count. So, for example, if there are 10,000 investor visas available in a year, and if the first 3,000 of those visas go to investors with 7,000 spouses and children, no additional visas are available to foreign investors. The Plaintiffs challenge this counting practice. They claim the Department should have stopped counting family members against the total number of investor visas after Congress relocated the controlling text within the Act in 1990. We disagree. The Act required the Department’s approach before 1990, and it still does. Congress did nothing in 1990 to change the text’s meaning. We therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal of the Plaintiffs’ lawsuit. I “An alien needs an immigrant visa to enter and permanently reside in the United States.” Scialabba v. Cuellar de Osorio, 573 U.S. 41, 46 (2014) (plurality opinion). The Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101–1537, 3 governs how immigrants obtain those visas. It prioritizes U.S. citizens’ immediate relatives. Scialabba, 573 U.S. at 46. From there, it gets complicated. For others hoping to reside in the United States, the Act outlines three immigrant visa categories: 1) “family-sponsored immigrants”: other relatives of U.S. citizens, see 8 U.S.C. § 1153(a); 2) “employment-based” immigrants: foreigners with marketable skills, see id. § 1153(b); and 3) “diversity” immigrants: citizens of “countries with historically low immigration to the United States,” see id. § 1153(c). See Scialabba, 573 U.S. at 46 & 47 n.3. Job-creating investors qualify for a subcategory of employment-based visas. 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5). These visa holders must invest at least $900,000 in a business if they build it in a …
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