IN THIS GUIDE · Reconcile the investment documents before relying on a simplified summary
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Show the individual lawful capital and correct threshold
September 2026 amounts are US$1,050,000 ordinarily or US$800,000 for a qualifying targeted employment area or infrastructure investment. Statutory adjustments begin January 1, 2027 under filing-date rules. Capital must be lawfully sourced and committed at risk; trace the actual path. Gifts or loans must be in good faith and not circumvent the requirements.
Preserve the meaning of capital rights
Contractual repayment rights and guaranteed rates of return are excluded from qualifying capital. An enterprise-only discretionary buyback has a statutory exception, but exercise requires petition withdrawal unless applicable sustainment and other requirements have been fulfilled. A summary must not describe conditional enterprise discretion as an investor’s guaranteed exit.
Explain jobs and governance without substituting labels
At least ten qualifying permanent full-time jobs per investor are required under the applicable standalone or regional-centre method. Direct jobs generally require at least 35 hours weekly; contractors, nonimmigrants, the investor, spouse and sons or daughters are excluded. Management or policy participation is required; qualifying limited-partner rights can meet this without daily operation. The words passive investment cannot resolve the actual participation rights.
State the residence sequence accurately
Conditional residence begins at immigrant admission or adjustment approval, not payment or petition filing. I-829 ordinarily is filed in the 90 days before the second anniversary; filing alone does not remove conditions or trigger repayment. Eligible accompanying derivatives need no separate principal investment merely to join. Their actual eligibility, CSPA analysis and visa availability cannot be replaced by a project summary.
The investor's role, the conditional period and the family
Each investor must create at least ten full-time positions for qualifying United States workers, and the word full-time carries its own definition of a minimum weekly hours commitment rather than any combination of part-time work. A regional-center project can count jobs created elsewhere in the local economy through recognized methodologies; a family building its own greenhouse cannot. The family should ask for the project's TEA evidence, which under current rules is determined by USCIS against census-tract data, rather than accept a marketing statement that the project is rural or high-unemployment. Where the investment is made through a designated regional centre, a defined portion of indirect and induced job creation may be counted using an accepted economic methodology, but the arithmetic still has to reach ten for every investor in the offering. A regional center's designation is not a government guarantee of any project's performance or of an immigration outcome. Source and path of funds can usually be documented with effort; whether the project’s structure supports the job creation and the participation requirement is not something the investor can cure by producing one more record. The business plan, economic report where applicable, subscription documents and job-creation methodology are therefore decision records, not sales materials. The conditional-residence period and the later removal-of-conditions filing are not reset by a delayed construction milestone or an investor’s preferred relocation schedule.
Direct investment expects the investor to be engaged
The standard qualifying investment is one million fifty thousand dollars, reduced to eight hundred thousand for an investment in a targeted employment area or an infrastructure project, under the framework set by the 2022 Reform and Integrity Act. Money held inside a corporation has to reach the investor before it can be invested, and the route chosen — dividend, salary, loan repayment, share redemption — determines both the tax consequence and the documentary trail. Investors must also be engaged in the management or policy formulation of the enterprise, which a limited partnership interest carrying the rights ordinarily accorded to limited partners can satisfy.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-08. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.