UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SRINIVASA SAI TEZA MUKKAVILLI, Plaintiff, Case No. 22-cv-2289 (TNM) v. UR M. JADDOU, Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION Indian national Srinivasa Sai Teza Mukkavilli invested nearly one million dollars in an equestrian center in rural America. He did so for a shot at lawful permanent residency through the “investor visa” program. But he has not received a visa. So Mukkavilli sued the Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Secretary of State under the Administrative Procedure Act. He argues that USCIS unlawfully withheld and unreasonably delayed his investor visa and petition for permanent residency. Mukkavilli also argues that USCIS’s decision to stop expediting various visa petitions was arbitrary and capricious. Among other things, he seeks an order compelling the agency to adjudicate his visa petition within two weeks and vacatur of certain final agency actions. �e Government moves to dismiss. �e Court will grant that motion. It lacks jurisdiction over Mukkavilli’s claims that the agency is unlawfully withholding a rural visa number (Count I), adjudication of his permanent residency petition (Count II), and an investor visa number (Count III). And Mukkavilli fails to 1 state claims for the rest: USCIS’s denial of an expedite is committed to agency discretion by law (Count IV) and it has not unreasonably delayed adjudication of his investor visa petition (Count V). I. A. First, some background on the investor visa program and how those visa petitions are processed. �e Immigration and Nationality Act provides visas to immigrants who help create American jobs. See 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5). Foreign investors can obtain visas several ways. One is to contribute to a USCIS-designated “regional center”—an entity that creates jobs indirectly through economic growth. 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5)(E). Congress established the regional center program as a five-year pilot. See Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 1992, Pub. L. No. 102-395, § 610(a) (Oct. 6, 1992) (previously codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1153 note). It set aside 300 visas a year for foreign investors who met certain criteria. See id. After its initial sunset, Congress periodically reauthorized the program until 2021. See Da Costa v. Immigr. Inv. Program Off., No. 22-cv-1576, 2022 WL 17173186, at *2 (D.D.C. Nov. 16, 2022) (summarizing this history). But in June 2021, the program lapsed for nine months. See id. �en, in March 2022, Congress revamped it. See EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (“Reform Act”), Pub. L. 117-103, 136 Stat. 1070 (2022) (codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5)). Apparently, some regional centers were fraudulent and raised national security concerns. See, e.g., Mirror Lake Vill., LLC v. Wolf, 971 F.3d 373, 378 (D.C. Cir. 2020) (Henderson, J., concurring) (noting these problems); see also News Release, Grassley, Leahy Introduce New EB- 5 Investor Visa Integrity Reforms (Mar. 18, 2021), https://perma.cc/WB34-F743. So Congress 2 reformed the program, reauthorized it through 2027, and changed parts of the investor …
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