EB-5 Investment Visa Requirements: Amounts, Jobs and Project Options

The EB-5 investment visa requires $800,000 if the business sits in a Targeted Employment Area, or $1,050,000 anywhere else, plus proof that the money was lawfully earned and evidence that the enterprise creates at least ten full time jobs for US workers. The investor and their spouse and unmarried children under twenty one receive two year conditional residence first, then apply to have the conditions removed once the jobs and the investment are documented. Those requirements come from the Immigration and Nationality Act as amended by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, and USCIS applies them through the Policy Manual volume on immigrant investors.

The two investment amounts, and which one applies

There is one reduced amount and one standard amount. The reduced $800,000 applies when the new commercial enterprise is principally doing business in a rural area or in an area of high unemployment. The standard $1,050,000 applies everywhere else. Since 2022 the designation is made by USCIS at the time of adjudication rather than by a state agency, which removed the gerrymandered census tract chains that used to qualify prime urban sites.

Two practical points. First, the designation is judged on the project, not on your address. Second, both amounts are scheduled to rise with inflation for the first time on 1 January 2027, and every five years thereafter. If you are choosing between filing this year and next, that is a real number, not a scare tactic. Start with Minimum Investment Amounts and TEA: How Much is Required? and Understanding Targeted Employment Areas (TEA) in EB-5.

Ten jobs, and how they are counted

Every investor must account for at least ten full time positions for qualifying US workers, created or preserved within roughly two years of conditional residence. How you prove it depends on the path you take. A direct investor counts actual W-2 employees of their own business, and the payroll records have to line up. A regional center investor may count indirect and induced jobs produced by an economist's input output model, which is why the large majority of investors choose that route.

The model is where most of the risk hides. Ask how many jobs the project projects per investor. A deal claiming exactly ten leaves you no cushion if construction slips or the hotel opens a year late. A deal claiming fifteen or eighteen per investor gives you room to be wrong. Ask which expenditures drive the model, since hard construction costs over a sufficient duration produce more defensible jobs than revenue assumptions do. More on this in Job Creation Requirement: How EB-5 Creates 10 Jobs.

Source of funds is where cases are won or lost

Adjudicators spend more time on the money trail than on anything else. You must show the lawful source of the invested capital and trace it, step by step, from origin to the project's account. Salary, business profits, property sale, gift, inheritance and loans secured by your own assets can all work. What sinks petitions is a gap: an unexplained deposit, a currency conversion through an informal channel, a business whose tax filings do not match the claimed income.

Regulatory detail on qualifying capital and the at risk requirement is set out in 8 CFR 204.6. Begin assembling this file before you shortlist projects, because it is the longest pole in the tent and it does not depend on which deal you pick. See Source of Funds: Proving Your Investment Money is Lawful.

Regional center or direct: the real trade off

A regional center is a USCIS designated entity that sponsors projects and can count indirect jobs. You are a passive limited partner. You get a professionally packaged offering, a job cushion from the economic model, and very little control. A direct investment means you run the business, count real employees, and answer for the payroll yourself. It suits entrepreneurs who want to operate, not investors who want to immigrate quietly.

Note one structural difference that matters after 2022: regional center projects must file an I-956F application for approval of an investment in a commercial enterprise before investors file their own petitions, and that filing is where the project's business plan and economic report get tested. Ask for the receipt notice. The comparison is laid out in Regional Center vs Direct EB-5: Key Differences and How to Choose and What Is an EB-5 Regional Center and How Does It Work?

Where the opportunities actually are now

The reform act reserved twenty percent of annual EB-5 visas for rural projects, ten percent for high unemployment areas and two percent for public infrastructure. Those set-aside categories have remained available to applicants of every nationality, while the unreserved category has retrogressed badly for investors born in mainland China and India. That single fact has reshaped the market: capital has moved toward rural deals, which also carry a statutory priority processing mandate.

Sector wise, the pipeline still leans on multifamily housing, hospitality, senior living and student accommodation, with growing activity in industrial and infrastructure adjacent projects. Popularity is not a quality signal, and a crowded rural category can queue up just as the unreserved one did. Read Visa Set-Asides (Rural, Urban, Infrastructure): How They Work before assuming a set-aside is a shortcut.

What the 2022 reform act demands of a project today

• Annual reporting by the regional center, plus audits, and disclosure of fees paid to agents and promoters.
• Background checks and bona fides declarations for the people behind the regional center and the issuer.
• Segregated accounts and restrictions on how investor capital moves.
• An integrity fund financed by annual fees on regional centers, used for site visits and investigations.
• Grandfathering for petitions filed on or before 30 September 2026, with the program authorized through 30 September 2027.

The enacted text is available as Public Law 117-103 on GovInfo. These rules are better than what came before, but they are compliance obligations, not a guarantee. Approval of a project application tests the immigration case, not the quality of the deal, and it is not an endorsement of the investment by USCIS. Program conditions and eligibility are set out on the USCIS EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program overview.

The timeline you are signing up for

Filing the petition establishes your priority date. If a visa is available in your category and you are already in the United States in valid status, you may be able to file for adjustment of status at the same time and obtain work and travel authorization while you wait. Otherwise you go through a consulate abroad. Approval plus visa availability produces two years of conditional residence, and near the end of that window you file to remove conditions, proving the capital stayed invested and the jobs were created.

Total elapsed time varies enormously by country of birth and by category. For an investor from a country with no retrogression choosing a rural project, the path runs a few years. For an investor born in mainland China in the unreserved category, it can run a decade or more.

Due diligence that is worth the name

• Read the private placement memorandum and the partnership agreement yourself, not just the summary deck.
• Check the capital stack. Where does EB-5 sit relative to senior debt, and how much developer equity is genuinely at risk alongside you?
• Ask the sponsor for their record on repayments and petition outcomes, in numbers, with dates.
• Confirm whether construction has started and the senior loan is closed. A project waiting on EB-5 to break ground is a different risk from one already out of the ground.
• Use an immigration attorney who is not paid by the project.

Capital in EB-5 is not guaranteed and cannot be. That is a legal requirement, not a marketing failure. The discipline is choosing projects where the immigration outcome and the repayment outcome are both defensible. Our starting point for that work is Conducting Due Diligence on EB-5 Projects: A Beginner's Guide.

Related reading

• Minimum Investment Amounts and TEA: How Much is Required?
• Job Creation Requirement: How EB-5 Creates 10 Jobs
• Regional Center vs Direct EB-5: Key Differences and How to Choose