Glossary

EB-5 glossary

Checked against primary sources on 10 August 2026.

What it decides

Money and structure

Who does what

Tax and residency

A to Z

0-9

3-NDFL declaration: The 3-NDFL is the Russian personal income tax declaration filed with the Federal Tax Service by 30 April for the previous year, with the tax due by 15 July, and it is the document a Russian EB-5 investor's source of funds file is usually built on.
75 percent cap on short construction jobs: Where a regional center project's estimated jobs come from construction activity lasting less than two years, the share of the ten-job requirement that may be met with indirect jobs falls from 90 percent to 75 percent.
8 CFR 204.6: 8 CFR 204.6 is the EB-5 regulation, and it still supplies the working definitions of employee, full-time employment and troubled business, but the text printed in the Code of Federal Regulations today is the 2019 version a court vacated, and USCIS applies the pre-2019 wording instead.
8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5): 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5), cited in filings as INA 203(b)(5), is the statute that creates the EB-5 category and, since the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, carries the investment amounts, the visa set-asides, the job creation caps and grandfathering in the statute itself. It runs from subparagraph (A) to subparagraph (S).
90 day filing window: The 90 day filing window is the 90 day period immediately preceding the second anniversary of the date an EB-5 investor obtained conditional permanent residence, and it is the period in which Form I-829 must be filed to remove the conditions; filing early gets the petition rejected and failing to file terminates status on that anniversary.
90 percent cap on indirect jobs: The 90 percent cap limits a regional center investor to meeting no more than nine of the ten required jobs with indirectly created ones, so at least one of the ten must be a direct job; a tighter 75 percent limit applies where the estimated jobs come from construction activity lasting less than two years.

A

Abandonment of residence: Abandonment of residence is the loss of lawful permanent resident status that follows from conduct showing the holder no longer intends to make the United States a permanent home, most often moving abroad for good, staying out on what is no longer a temporary visit, or claiming nonresident status on a US tax return.
Accredited investor: An accredited investor is a person or entity meeting one of the categories in SEC Rule 501(a), 17 CFR 230.501(a), chiefly a net worth above $1,000,000 excluding the primary residence, or income above $200,000 individually or $300,000 jointly in each of the last two years. It is a securities law status, not an EB-5 eligibility test.
Adjustment of status: Adjustment of status is the process under 8 U.S.C. 1255 by which someone already in the United States becomes a permanent resident without leaving, on Form I-485, instead of collecting an immigrant visa at a consulate abroad. An EB-5 investor who adjusts is granted conditional permanent residence for two years, the same status a consular applicant receives on admission.
Administrative Appeals Office: The Administrative Appeals Office, or AAO, is the USCIS body that reviews denials of EB-5 investor petitions, regional center applications and project approvals, looking at the whole record afresh rather than deferring to the officer below, and no court may take up an EB-5 determination until its review has been exhausted.
Administrative fee: A charge the investor pays to the new commercial enterprise, its manager or the regional center on top of the qualifying investment, covering offering, marketing and management costs. No immigration statute or regulation sets or caps the amount, and it does not count toward the $800,000 or $1,050,000.
Administrative processing: Administrative processing is the Department of State's label for an immigrant visa case that has already been formally refused under INA 221(g) at the end of the interview and is held open while the post or the Department finishes checks, an advisory opinion or a further inquiry. Nothing sets a deadline for that work.
Advance parole: Advance parole is the travel document that lets someone with a pending Form I-485 leave the United States and be paroled back in without the departure being treated as abandonment of that adjustment application.
Affiliated job-creating entity: A job-creating entity in the regional center program that is controlled, managed or owned by any of the people involved with the regional center or the new commercial enterprise, those people being the ones who hold substantive authority, directly or indirectly, over the investors' money.
Age determination for children of investors: 8 U.S.C. 1153(h)(5) keeps a derivative child of an EB-5 investor a child after turning 21: if the child's conditional permanent residence is terminated, the principal investor may file one further EB-5 petition within a year of the termination and the child still counts, provided the child is unmarried.
Anti-money laundering and know your customer: Anti-money laundering and know your customer are the Bank Secrecy Act checks a United States bank or broker runs on an EB-5 investor and on the money itself before an account opens or a wire clears, and they are separate from, and often stricter than, the lawful source of funds test USCIS applies to the petition.
Australian Significant Investor Visa: The Australian Significant Investor Visa was the Significant Investor stream of the Business Innovation and Investment (Provisional) visa, subclass 188: it required a complying significant investment of at least AUD 5,000,000 held for the life of the visa, and it closed permanently to new applications on 31 July 2024.

B

Backlog: Backlog is the demand already waiting ahead of an investor in the same visa category, the same country of chargeability and, since the 2022 set-asides, the same reserved or unreserved pool, which must be worked through before a visa number reaches them.
Bankruptcy of the project: Bankruptcy of the project is the failure of the business holding or using the EB-5 capital, which ends the investment but does not by itself end the immigration case, because removal of conditions turns on what already happened to the capital and to the jobs.
Bona fides certification: Bona fides certification is the integrity screen at 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(H) that bars whole categories of person from being involved with a regional center, new commercial enterprise or job-creating entity, together with the attestation each such person files on Form I-956H so USCIS can run background and criminal record checks against it.
Borrowed funds: Borrowed funds are money an EB-5 investor is lent and then contributes as capital. Since Zhang v. USCIS, USCIS evaluates invested loan proceeds as a cash contribution, not indebtedness, so the loan need not be collateralized, but for petitions filed on or after 14 May 2022 the statute counts them only if the loan was made in good faith and not to circumvent the limits on permissible sources.
Bridge financing: Bridge financing is the interim debt or equity a developer or the principal of a new commercial enterprise uses to start a project before EB-5 capital arrives, and which the EB-5 capital then replaces.
Broker-dealer: A broker-dealer is a firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission under section 15 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to effect securities transactions for customers, and in EB-5 it is the registration a person generally needs before taking transaction-based pay for placing investors in an offering.
Buy back option: A buy back option is a right to repurchase an EB-5 investor's interest that only the new commercial enterprise may exercise, and 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(D)(ii)(IV) makes it the one repurchase arrangement the statute leaves inside the definition of capital, provided it also results in the investor withdrawing the petition unless the sustainment period and the other requirements have been met.

C

Capital: Capital is the cash and tangible assets an EB-5 investor contributes to the new commercial enterprise. Two texts define it: the statute, which governs petitions filed on or after 15 March 2022, and the older regulation, whose conditions on debt USCIS still applies alongside the statute.
Capital account: The ledger a limited partnership or LLC keeps for each investor, recording capital contributed, profit and loss allocated, and anything distributed back out. It is an accounting term, not an immigration one.
Capital at risk: The rule that the investor's required capital must be genuinely exposed to loss, with a real chance of gain, and not shielded by a guaranteed return or by any contractual right to repayment.
Capital investment project: A capital investment project is the specific undertaking that a regional center's business plan describes and that the pooled investor capital funds, whether it is carried out by a separate job-creating entity or by the new commercial enterprise itself. It is the project a Form I-956F is approved for, not the entity the investor subscribes into.
Capital stack: The capital stack is the ranking of a project's funding sources by priority of claim, from senior debt, which is paid first and absorbs losses last, down through mezzanine debt and preferred equity to common equity, which is paid last and absorbs the first losses. It is a finance term rather than an EB-5 one: nothing in the EB-5 statute or regulations fixes where a project's EB-5 money must rank.
Carryover of unused reserved visas: Carryover is the rule at 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(B)(i)(II) that keeps an unused rural, high unemployment or infrastructure EB-5 visa inside its own reserved category for one more fiscal year, after which any number still unissued goes to the unreserved EB-5 pool and is lost to the reservation for good.
Census tract: A census tract is a Census Bureau statistical subdivision of a county or county equivalent, generally holding 1,200 to 8,000 people, and the unit from which a high unemployment targeted employment area is built.
Certifier: A certifier is the person in a position of substantive authority for the management or operations of a regional center, new commercial enterprise, affiliated job-creating entity or issuer of securities, such as its principal executive officer or principal financial officer, who knows its EB-5 compliance policies and signs the certifications the statute requires.
Change of address: Change of address is the duty every registered noncitizen in the United States owes USCIS to report a new address in writing within ten days of moving, a duty that attaches to registration rather than to any pending case and applies just as much to a move down the same street as to a move across the country.
Child Status Protection Act: The Child Status Protection Act is the 2002 statute that can keep a derivative child of an EB-5 investor a child by subtracting the days the parent's petition was pending from the child's age on the date a visa became available, so only adjudication time comes off and the wait in the visa queue does not.
Citizenship by investment: Citizenship by investment is a scheme that grants a country's nationality, and its passport, in exchange for a set payment or investment; the United States runs no such scheme, and EB-5 buys conditional permanent residence, never citizenship.
Combinations of part-time positions: Two or more separate part-time positions can never be added together to make one qualifying EB-5 job, even when their hours combine to the 35 a week that counts as full-time. Only a single full-time position shared by two or more qualifying employees counts.
Commercial enterprise: A commercial enterprise is any for-profit activity formed for the ongoing conduct of lawful business, in any entity form, publicly or privately owned, and not a noncommercial activity such as owning and operating a personal residence. For petitions filed on or after 15 March 2022 the term that governs is new commercial enterprise, which the statute defines more narrowly: a for-profit organization formed in the United States that receives, or is established to receive, EB-5 capital.
Completion guaranty: A completion guaranty is a promise by the project sponsor or a creditworthy affiliate to fund cost overruns and finish construction, made to the lender or the project entity rather than to the individual EB-5 investor. It guarantees the building, not the investor's capital and not the jobs.
Compliance audit: A compliance audit, which USCIS calls a regional center audit, is the review USCIS must conduct on every designated regional center at least once every five years under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(vii)(II), examining the records the center must keep and the flow of investor capital into its capital investment projects.
Comprehensive business plan: A comprehensive business plan is the document showing that a new commercial enterprise will need at least ten qualifying employees within the next two years, with approximate hiring dates; a standalone investor files it with the petition, while a regional center offering now carries it in the regional center's Form I-956F project application instead.
Concurrent filing: Concurrent filing is submitting Form I-485 together with Form I-526 or I-526E, or while the petition is still pending, instead of waiting for the petition to be approved. 8 U.S.C. 1255(n) permits it whenever approval of the petition would make a visa immediately available to the investor.
Conditional permanent residence: Conditional permanent residence is the status an EB-5 investor and their spouse and children hold for the first two years: full lawful permanent residence, evidenced by a Green Card valid for two years, whose conditional basis must be removed on Form I-829 or the status ends.
Construction job proration: Construction job proration is the rule that a regional center project's direct construction jobs count only in proportion to how long the build lasts: where construction runs less than two years, the estimated direct jobs are multiplied by the fraction of a two year period the work takes, so an 18 month build yields 75 percent of them.
Construction jobs cap: The construction jobs cap is the statutory rule that where a regional center project's estimated jobs come from construction activity lasting less than two years, no more than 75 percent of the ten job requirement may be met with indirect jobs, against 90 percent in the ordinary case.
Consular processing: Consular processing is the route to permanent residence through a US embassy or consulate abroad, on Form DS-260 and an interview, rather than by adjusting status inside the United States. It is the only route for an investor who stays outside the country, and it is open by choice to one already inside.
Continuous residence and physical presence: Continuous residence and physical presence are the two separate naturalization tests in 8 U.S.C. 1427(a): an unbroken five year residence in the United States after admission as a permanent resident, and at least 30 months, or 913 days, actually spent inside the country during those five years.
Controlled foreign corporation: A controlled foreign corporation is a foreign corporation in which US shareholders, each holding 10 percent or more of its vote or value, together own more than 50 percent of its vote or value on any day of its tax year, which taxes its undistributed earnings to them personally.
Country of chargeability: Country of chargeability is the foreign state against whose per country visa ceiling an applicant is counted, set by place of birth rather than by citizenship, passport or current residence, subject to four narrow exceptions.
Cross-chargeability: Cross-chargeability is the rule that charges an applicant's immigrant visa to a spouse's or a parent's country of birth instead of their own, so that a family facing different per-country queues is not separated.

D

Date for Filing: A Date for Filing is a cut-off date on the Dates for Filing Applications chart of the monthly Visa Bulletin: an adjustment applicant whose priority date falls before it may lodge Form I-485, but only in a month when USCIS has designated that chart, and it never authorizes approval of the application.
Dates for Filing: Dates for Filing is the more permissive of the two cutoff charts in each monthly Visa Bulletin, and its date is normally later than the matching Final Action Dates cutoff, so it opens paperwork earlier in the queue than a visa number is actually ready. For Form I-485 it applies only in the months and categories USCIS designates; the State Department uses it separately to decide when the National Visa Center asks a consular applicant for documents.
Death of the investor: Death of the investor during the two year conditional residence does not end the family's case: 8 CFR 216.6(a)(6) keeps the surviving spouse and children eligible for removal of conditions, so long as they show the same investment, sustainment and job creation evidence the investor would have had to show.
Debarment and suspension: Debarment and suspension are the EB-5 sanctions the USCIS Director imposes on a non-compliant regional center or the individuals behind it: a suspension is temporary and lifts if the violation is cured, while a debarment is a permanent bar, and both sit on one graduated ladder that also carries fines and termination of the regional center's designation.
Default and foreclosure: Default is the project borrower failing to meet its obligations to a lender, and foreclosure is that lender taking the pledged collateral, which in the usual regional center loan structure can leave EB-5 capital, ranking behind the senior lender, with nothing left to recover.
Deference: Deference is the rule that USCIS stands by a determination it has already made about an EB-5 project when it adjudicates later filings resting on the same facts, so the project is not argued again investor by investor. Since the 2022 Act it is statutory: an approved Form I-956F binds the adjudication of every investor in that offering.
Denial and revocation: Denial and revocation are the two ways USCIS refuses an EB-5 petition: a denial rejects a petition that has not established eligibility, and a revocation withdraws an approval already granted, which is why an approved EB-5 petition is never finally settled.
Derivative beneficiary: A derivative beneficiary is the spouse or unmarried child under 21 of an EB-5 investor who, under 8 U.S.C. 1153(d), takes the same classification, the same order of consideration and the same priority date as the investor without filing a petition of their own.
Developer equity: Developer equity is the project sponsor's own money in a deal, normally the most subordinate position in the capital stack: repaid only after the lenders and after the EB-5 capital, and first to absorb a loss. It is a project finance term rather than an immigration one, and no EB-5 rule sets a minimum for it.
Direct and third-party promoter: A direct or third-party promoter is any person, migration agents and their subagents and employees included, who promotes a regional center, a new commercial enterprise, an affiliated job-creating entity or an issuer of EB-5 securities to immigrant investors, and who must register with USCIS on Form I-956K before doing so.
Direct EB-5: Direct EB-5, which USCIS calls the standalone program, is an EB-5 investment made without a regional center and filed on Form I-526, where only the full-time jobs created by the new commercial enterprise itself, or by its wholly owned subsidiaries, count toward the ten.
Direct jobs: A direct job is a position held by an employee of the new commercial enterprise itself or, in a regional center case, of the job-creating entity, as distinct from an indirect job held at a supplier or other business outside them.
Due diligence: Due diligence in EB-5 is the investor's own independent check on the project, its business plan, its job model, its sponsor and its exit, and it answers a different question from whether the petition qualifies, because no government agency endorses or approves the offering behind a designated regional center.

E

E-2 treaty investor visa: The E-2 treaty investor visa is a nonimmigrant classification for a national of a country holding a qualifying treaty of commerce and navigation with the United States who has invested, or is actively in the process of investing, a substantial amount of capital in a bona fide US enterprise and seeks entry solely to develop and direct it.
EB-1C multinational manager: EB-1C is the employment-based first preference subcategory for a manager or executive transferred to a United States employer from the same firm abroad or from its parent, subsidiary or affiliate, and it requires no investment, no job creation and no labor certification.
EB-2 national interest waiver: A national interest waiver is a grant under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(2)(B)(i) that lets someone who already qualifies for the employment-based second preference self-petition on Form I-140, because USCIS has waived the job offer, and with it the labor certification, on the ground that the person's proposed endeavor serves the national interest.
EB-3: EB-3 is the employment-based third preference immigrant category, covering skilled workers whose job requires at least two years of training or experience, professionals holding a bachelor's degree, and other workers in unskilled jobs requiring less than two years, each of whom needs a permanent full-time job offer from a US employer.
EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program: EB-5 is the employment-based fifth preference immigrant visa category: a foreign national who invests the required capital in a new US commercial enterprise receives permanent residence, granted first on a two year conditional basis, and keeps it by proving that the investment created full-time jobs for at least ten qualifying US workers. It leads to residence, not citizenship.
EB-5 Integrity Fund: A US Treasury fund created by 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(J) to pay for EB-5 oversight, financed by an annual fee on every designated regional center plus $1,000 collected with each initial Form I-526E.
EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022: The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 is Division BB of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Public Law 117-103, approved on 15 March 2022, and it rewrote the EB-5 category in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Economic impact report: An economic impact report is the economist's analysis that turns a project's spending, revenues or direct hiring into an estimated job total, and the project application a regional center files for each investment offering must include one. The statute and USCIS call it a credible economic analysis.
Employee: Employee, for EB-5 job counting, is a person who provides services or labor for the new commercial enterprise and receives wages or other remuneration directly from it, a definition that expressly excludes independent contractors and is separate from whether that person is a qualifying employee.
Employment authorization document: An employment authorization document, Form I-766, is the card USCIS issues on an approved Form I-765 to prove that its holder may work in the United States for a stated period, and an EB-5 investor needs one only while a Form I-485 is pending, because a green card is itself evidence of work authorization.
Equity model: Equity model is the industry name for a structure in which the new commercial enterprise takes an ownership stake in the job creating entity instead of lending to it. It describes only that leg of the deal: the investor's own capital always goes into the new commercial enterprise as equity, never as a loan.
Escrow: Escrow in EB-5 is an arrangement under which an investor's subscription money is held in a designated account under a written escrow agreement and released to the new commercial enterprise only when a stated trigger occurs, rather than passing to the enterprise on subscription.
Escrow agent: An escrow agent is the party, usually a bank or trust company, that holds an EB-5 investor's subscription money under a written escrow agreement and releases it to the new commercial enterprise only when the trigger stated in that agreement occurs. No EB-5 statute or regulation defines the role, but USCIS limits what the trigger may be.
Exemplar: An exemplar was a sample Form I-526 filed with a Form I-924 for an actual project, so that USCIS reviewed the enterprise's organizational and transactional documents once and gave that determination deference in later investor petitions. USCIS now uses the word in the past tense: there is no exemplar filing after 15 March 2022.
Exit strategy: Exit strategy is the industry name for how and when invested capital is meant to return to the investor, whether through repayment of the project loan, a sale, a refinancing or a buyback. USCIS does not define the term, and immigration law limits it: capital the investor has a contractual right to get back does not count as capital at all.
Exit tax and expatriation: The exit tax is the mark to market charge under 26 U.S.C. 877A that treats all property of a covered expatriate as sold at fair market value on the day before they give up US citizenship or long-term US permanent residence.
Expansion of an existing business: Expansion of an existing business is one of the three routes in 8 CFR 204.6(h) to establishing a new commercial enterprise: investing the required amount so that net worth or employee count rises by 40 percent, to at least 140 percent of the pre-expansion figure. The route reaches only petitions filed before 15 March 2022, because the RIA definition of new commercial enterprise at 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(D)(vi) carries no expansion test.
Expedite request: An expedite request asks USCIS to take a pending application, petition, request, appeal or motion out of turn and decide it ahead of cases filed earlier. USCIS weighs each one case by case against a list of criteria it calls non-exhaustive, generally requires documentary support, and treats the decision as within its sole discretion.
Expenditure model: An expenditure model estimates EB-5 job creation by feeding a project's spending into an economic input-output model, rather than feeding it the project's projected revenues or a verified count of direct hires. USCIS does not use the label itself, but it recognizes expenditures as one of the input types an investor may rely on and requires the investor to show that the expenditure figures are reasonable.
Extension notice: An extension notice is the Form I-797 receipt USCIS issues on a properly filed Form I-829 which, carried together with the expired conditional Green Card, is evidence of continued conditional permanent resident status, of work authorization and of the right to return after temporary travel abroad.

F

F-1 student status and OPT: F-1 is the nonimmigrant status of a foreign student at a school certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, and optional practical training is the temporary work authorization it can carry: 12 months, renewed only when the student moves up to a higher educational level, plus a 24 month extension for a qualifying STEM degree.
FATCA and Form 8938: Form 8938 is the FATCA report of specified foreign financial assets, attached to the income tax return under 26 U.S.C. 6038D, and it is additional to the FBAR rather than a substitute for it. The same Act makes foreign banks report their US account holders to the IRS, which is how the two sides get matched.
FBAR: The FBAR is FinCEN Form 114, the annual report of foreign financial accounts that every US person, which a green card makes you, must file when those accounts together exceeded $10,000 at any moment in the calendar year. It goes to FinCEN through the BSA E-Filing System, not to the IRS with the tax return.
Final Action Date: A final action date, shown in the Department of State Visa Bulletin as an Application Final Action Date, is the cut-off at which an immigrant visa may actually be issued or an adjustment of status approved for a given preference category and country of chargeability.
Finder's fee: A finder's fee is the transaction-based payment made to whoever introduced an investor to an EB-5 offering, and 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(K)(iv) requires every EB-5 petition to carry a disclosure, signed by the investor, of the fees and other compensation paid in connection with the investment.
FIRPTA: FIRPTA is the regime under which a foreign person's gain on disposing of a US real property interest is taxed as if it were effectively connected with a US trade or business, and the buyer must deduct and withhold 15 percent of the amount realized, meaning the gross price rather than the profit.
Foreign government involvement: Foreign government involvement is what 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(H)(ii)(II) forbids: no agency, official or representative of a foreign government entity may provide capital to, or be directly or indirectly involved with the ownership or administration of, a regional center, a new commercial enterprise or a job-creating entity.
Form A2 and Forms 15CA and 15CB: Form A2 is the application and declaration an Indian resident must furnish to the authorised dealer bank to buy foreign exchange for an outward remittance, while Forms 15CA and 15CB are separate income tax filings for a payment to a non-resident, from which a remittance made by an individual that needs no prior Reserve Bank approval is exempt.
Form D: Form D is the short notice an issuer must file with the SEC within 15 calendar days of the first sale in a Regulation D offering, and it is a public EDGAR record an investor can search to confirm that an EB-5 offering was in fact filed as described. It is a notice, not an approval.
Form DS-260: Form DS-260, Electronic Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration, is the Department of State application an EB-5 applicant files when taking the consular route, the counterpart to Form I-485 for someone who will collect an immigrant visa abroad rather than adjust status inside the United States.
Form G-1055: Form G-1055 is the USCIS fee schedule, the single document listing the fee currently in effect for every USCIS form, and for EB-5 it is the figure USCIS will actually accept, because the EB-5 amounts printed in 8 CFR 106.2 are stayed and are rejected on filing.
Form G-28: Form G-28, Notice of Entry of Appearance as Attorney or Accredited Representative, is the filing that puts a lawyer or accredited representative on the record in a USCIS matter, and by doing so it decides who USCIS serves with the requests for evidence, the notices and the decision.
Form I-131: Form I-131, Application for Travel Documents, Parole Documents, and Arrival/Departure Records, carries two unrelated EB-5 requests: advance parole, which lets an adjustment applicant leave the United States without abandoning Form I-485, and a reentry permit, which protects a resident's status during a long absence abroad.
Form I-140: Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers, is the USCIS immigrant petition for the employment-based first, second and third preferences, covering extraordinary ability, outstanding researchers, multinational managers and executives, advanced degree and national interest waiver cases, skilled workers, professionals and other workers. An EB-5 investor never files it.
Form I-290B: Form I-290B, Notice of Appeal or Motion, is the single form carrying three different requests: an appeal to the Administrative Appeals Office, a motion to reopen on new facts, and a motion to reconsider on legal error.
Form I-407: Form I-407, Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident Status, is the voluntary filing by which a permanent resident records that they have given up that status, and signing it waives the right to have an immigration judge decide whether the status was in fact abandoned.
Form I-485: Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, is the application by which someone already inside the United States becomes a permanent resident without going abroad for a consular interview; an EB-5 investor who files it receives the same two year conditional residence a consular applicant gets on admission.
Form I-526: Form I-526, Immigrant Petition by Standalone Investor, is the EB-5 petition for an investor going direct under INA 203(b)(5), investing alone in a new commercial enterprise outside the Regional Center Program.
Form I-526E: Form I-526E, Immigrant Petition by Regional Center Investor, is the petition an investor files with USCIS to claim EB-5 classification under INA 203(b)(5)(E) for capital pooled in an offering for which a designated regional center has already filed Form I-956F.
Form I-551: Form I-551, the Permanent Resident Card or green card, is the document 8 CFR 264.1(b) lists as evidence of alien registration for a lawful permanent resident, and an EB-5 investor's first one is issued with a two year expiry because the residence it evidences is conditional.
Form I-693: Form I-693, Report of Immigration Medical Examination and Vaccination Record, is the sealed report a USCIS-designated civil surgeon completes to show that an adjustment of status applicant is not inadmissible on health-related grounds. It belongs to the Form I-485 route alone: an investor going through a consulate is examined by a panel physician instead.
Form I-765: Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, is the request for an Employment Authorization Document, filed by an EB-5 investor and each derivative under eligibility category (c)(9) once Form I-485 has been filed, so the family may work while the adjustment application is pending.
Form I-797: Form I-797 is not a form anyone completes but the family of notices USCIS sends about a case, a plain I-797 plus suffixes A to F, each carrying a different message, from a receipt to a request for evidence.
Form I-829: Form I-829, Petition by Investor to Remove Conditions on Permanent Resident Status, is the petition an EB-5 conditional permanent resident files in the 90 days before the second anniversary of that status, asking USCIS to confirm the capital was invested and the ten jobs created and to make the green card unconditional.
Form I-90: Form I-90, Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card (Green Card), is how a permanent resident replaces or renews the card itself, not the status behind it. An EB-5 investor reaches it only after Form I-829 has removed the conditions and the ten year card is expiring, lost, damaged or wrong.
Form I-924 and I-924A: Form I-924, Application For Regional Center Designation Under the Immigrant Investor Program, and its annual companion Form I-924A, Annual Certification of Regional Center, are the pre-2022 regional center filings that USCIS has archived and no longer accepts, because the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 repealed the appropriations provision they ran on.
Form I-956: Form I-956, Application for Regional Center Designation, is the application an economic unit files to be designated by USCIS as an EB-5 regional center under INA 203(b)(5)(E), or to amend a designation it already holds.
Form I-956F: Form I-956F, Application for Approval of an Investment in a Commercial Enterprise, is the application a designated regional center must file for each particular investment offering before any investor may petition on that offering.
Form I-956G: Form I-956G, Regional Center Annual Statement, is the yearly filing every designated regional center must submit to support its continued eligibility for designation, accounting for investor capital, project progress, fees collected from investors and required compliance certifications.
Form I-956H: Form I-956H, Bona Fides of Persons Involved with Regional Center Program, is the background attestation that each person involved with a regional center, a new commercial enterprise or an affiliated job-creating entity must complete and file as a distinct submission alongside Form I-956 or Form I-956F.
Form I-956K: Form I-956K, Registration for Direct and Third-Party Promoters, is the USCIS registration that each person promoting a regional center EB-5 offering must file, including migration agents, subagents and employees of promoter firms.
Form N-400: Form N-400, Application for Naturalization, is the application for United States citizenship, open to a permanent resident after five years of continuous residence, or three when married to and living in marital union with a US citizen, and USCIS accepts it up to 90 days early.
Form N-470: Form N-470, Application to Preserve Residence for Naturalization Purposes, is the filing a permanent resident uses to stop an absence abroad of a year or more, taken for qualifying employment, from breaking the continuous residence that naturalization requires.
Full-time employment: Full-time employment in EB-5 means employment of a qualifying employee in a position that requires a minimum of 35 working hours per week, not 40. The 35 hours are measured by what the position requires rather than by the hours any one person works, which is why job sharing counts, but the person filling the position must still be a qualifying employee.
Fund administration: Fund administration is the duty under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(Q) for a new commercial enterprise to hold each investor's capital in a separate insured United States account and to retain an independent fund administrator over that account. The account requirement cannot be waived; the administrator can be, either by an annual GAAS financial audit shared with DHS and every investor, or by a discretionary waiver where an SEC registered adviser or broker-dealer controls the enterprise.
Fund administrator: A fund administrator is the independent licensed professional that a new commercial enterprise must retain under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(Q)(iv) to cosign every separate account holding EB-5 investor capital and to check and countersign each transfer out of it before the money moves, unless the requirement is waived.

G

General partner and managing member: The general partner of a limited partnership, or the managing member or manager of a limited liability company, is the party that controls the EB-5 new commercial enterprise and decides what happens to the pooled capital. The partnership or operating agreement sets that power; the immigration statute only screens who may hold it.
Gifted funds: Gifted capital counts toward the EB-5 minimum investment only if the gift was made in good faith and not to get around the limits on permissible sources of capital, and only if the donor's own lawful source of funds is documented to the standard the investor has to meet.
Gold Card: The Gold Card is an expedited immigrant visa process created by Executive Order 14351 of 19 September 2025, under which an unrestricted gift of $1 million by an individual, or $2 million by a company on an individual's behalf, to the Department of Commerce is treated as evidence of eligibility for an existing EB-1 or EB-2 immigrant visa; it is not a new visa category and it is not EB-5.
Golden visa: Golden visa is a colloquial name for a foreign residence by investment programme that grants residence in the country running it in return for a qualifying investment; it is not a term in United States law, it grants nothing in the United States, and the closest US equivalent is EB-5, which is bought with a real enterprise and ten jobs rather than with a payment.
Good faith investor protection: Good faith investor protection is the rule at 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(M) that keeps an EB-5 petition or conditional residence alive after USCIS terminates the regional center or debars the new commercial enterprise or job creating entity, provided the investor cures within 180 days of being notified and was not a knowing participant in the conduct behind it.
Grandfathering: The rule at 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S) that requires DHS to keep processing a regional center investor's petition, and to keep visas flowing to approved ones, even if the legislation authorizing the regional center program expires, provided the petition was filed on or before 30 September 2026.
Guaranteed return: A promise that the investor will earn a set return, or will get the principal back, which the EB-5 statute strikes out of the capital that counts, to the extent of the amount guaranteed.

H

H-1B: H-1B is temporary US work status for a specialty occupation, meaning a job whose minimum requirement for entry is a bachelor's degree or higher in a directly related specific specialty, granted on an employer's petition and limited to six years of total stay under 8 U.S.C. 1184(g)(4).
Hard costs and soft costs: The split in a project budget between physical construction spending, the hard costs, and the professional, financing and carrying costs around it, the soft costs. Neither phrase is defined in the EB-5 statute or regulations, but the split decides which dollars enter a job creation model and at which multiplier.
High employment area: A high employment area is a part of a metropolitan statistical area that, at the time of investment, is not a targeted employment area and has an unemployment rate significantly below the national average. It is the statutory opposite of a high unemployment area, but it carries no price premium today: an investment there requires the standard $1,050,000, the same as any investment outside a targeted employment area or infrastructure project.
High unemployment area: One of the two routes into a targeted employment area: a census tract, or contiguous census tracts, that the Secretary of Homeland Security designates as a high unemployment area because the weighted average unemployment rate across them is at least 150 percent of the national average. The other route is a rural area.

I

IIUSA: The trade association of the EB-5 regional center industry, a 501(c)(6) founded in 2005 and paid for by the regional centers and service providers it speaks for.
Immigrant investor: An immigrant investor is the person whose own capital goes into a new commercial enterprise and who self-petitions for employment-based fifth preference classification on that investment; the statute calls this person the alien investor, and neither the investor nor the investor's spouse, sons or daughters may be counted among the ten jobs the investment must create.
Immigrant Investor Pilot Program: The Immigrant Investor Pilot Program is the original name of what is now the EB-5 Regional Center Program: the 1992 experiment that set aside 300 EB-5 visas a year for five years for investors in designated regional centers, and the name that 8 CFR 204.6(m) still carries today even though the section it rests on was repealed in 2022.
Immigrant Investor Program Office: The Immigrant Investor Program Office (IPO) is the single USCIS office that administers the EB-5 program and adjudicates its investor petitions and regional center filings. USCIS locates it in Washington, DC, not at a service center.
Immigration attorney: An immigration attorney is the lawyer who prepares an EB-5 investor's petitions and enters an appearance before USCIS on Form G-28, a role 8 CFR 103.2(a)(3) reserves to an attorney licensed in a US state, an attorney licensed abroad acting in matters outside the United States, or a representative accredited by the Board of Immigration Appeals.
IMPLAN: IMPLAN, short for IMpact analysis for PLANning, is a commercial input-output modeling system and regional data set developed by the US Forest Service in the 1980s and privatized in the 1990s, now one of the models most often used to estimate EB-5 job creation.
INA 245(k): INA 245(k) is the exemption that lets an employment-based adjustment applicant, including an EB-5 investor since the Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, file Form I-485 despite up to 180 days in aggregate of failing to maintain lawful status, unauthorized employment, or otherwise violating the terms of admission.
Indebtedness secured by assets: Indebtedness secured by assets is debt an EB-5 investor may contribute as capital under 8 CFR 204.6(e), and it counts only where the investor owns the collateral, is personally and primarily liable for the debt, and has not let the assets of the new commercial enterprise secure any of it. It qualifies only up to the fair market value of the pledged assets.
Indirect jobs: Indirect jobs are positions created elsewhere in the economy by a project's spending, estimated with an economic model rather than counted from a payroll, and available only to regional center investors. They may fill at most nine of the ten jobs each investor must create.
Individual Taxpayer Identification Number: An Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, is a nine digit number the IRS issues on Form W-7 to someone who needs a US taxpayer identification number for federal tax purposes but is not eligible for a Social Security number, and it is issued for federal tax purposes only: it does not permit work and does not change immigration status.
Induced jobs: Induced jobs are jobs a model attributes to the project's direct and indirect employees spending their earnings on consumer goods and services, which USCIS treats for EB-5 purposes as a sub-set of indirect jobs.
Inflation adjustment: The automatic adjustment of the EB-5 minimum investment amounts to inflation, added to the statute by the RIA in 2022, which runs for the first time on 1 January 2027 and every five years after.
Infrastructure project: A second route to the $800,000 EB-5 investment amount, available only through the regional center program, in which a governmental entity is itself the job-creating entity and contracts with a regional center or new commercial enterprise to receive the investors' capital as financing for maintaining, improving, or constructing a public works project.
Input-output model: An input-output model is an accounting framework of interindustry purchases that estimates how spending on a project spreads into output and jobs across a regional economy. In EB-5 it is the standard way a regional center investor shows job creation, and it produces estimated jobs rather than a verified headcount.
Interview: An interview is a required personal appearance before a government officer, and an EB-5 case can involve up to three: the immigrant visa interview at a consulate, the adjustment of status interview, and the interview 8 U.S.C. 1186b requires before conditions come off residence, which USCIS may waive.
Invest: Invest, in EB-5, means to contribute capital to the new commercial enterprise, and 8 CFR 204.6(e) provides that a contribution made in exchange for a note, bond, convertible debt, obligation or any other debt arrangement between the investor and that enterprise is not a contribution of capital, so the money must buy an ownership interest rather than a claim to be repaid.

J

Job allocation: Job allocation is the division of a new commercial enterprise's qualifying full-time jobs among the EB-5 investors who petitioned on it, at least ten to each, under any reasonable agreement the investors have made. Where the documents are silent, USCIS allocates by the date each investor filed to remove conditions, so a shortfall falls on the last to file rather than on everyone in equal shares.
Job cushion: A job cushion is the margin between the jobs a project's economic report forecasts and the jobs its investors need, which is ten full-time jobs per investor. The word is offering document usage: no statute or regulation defines a cushion or sets a minimum one.
Job sharing: A job-sharing arrangement, where two or more qualifying employees share one full-time position, counts as full-time employment for EB-5 provided the position still requires at least 35 working hours a week.
Job-creating entity: A job-creating entity, or JCE, is the United States business in a regional center EB-5 deal that receives the investment capital, either straight from the investors or through the new commercial enterprise, and is responsible for creating the ten full-time jobs each investor's petition must count.

L

L-1 intracompany transferee: L-1 is temporary US work status for an employee a multinational moves into a US parent, branch, affiliate or subsidiary, as an executive or manager under L-1A or in a specialized knowledge role under L-1B, after one continuous year of employment abroad with the same group of companies.
Lawful permanent resident: A lawful permanent resident is a person lawfully accorded the privilege of residing permanently in the United States as an immigrant under 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(20), and it is the status an EB-5 case delivers: conditional for the first two years, then unconditional once Form I-829 is approved.
Liberalised Remittance Scheme: The Liberalised Remittance Scheme is the Reserve Bank of India facility under which a resident individual, minors included, may remit up to USD 250,000 abroad in a financial year running April to March for any permitted current or capital account transaction, with any overseas investment made under it governed by the Overseas Investment Rules 2022.
Limited partner: A limited partner is an EB-5 investor holding a passive equity interest in a new commercial enterprise organized as a limited partnership, the position most regional center offerings put investors in, and one USCIS accepts as enough engagement in management without any operational role.
Loan model: The loan model is the regional center structure in which the new commercial enterprise lends the pooled investor capital to a separate job creating entity, most often a company the project developer controls, instead of taking an ownership stake in it.

M

Mandamus: Mandamus is a suit in federal district court, brought under 28 U.S.C. 1361 and the Administrative Procedure Act, asking a judge to order USCIS to decide a petition it has left pending. It buys an adjudication and nothing more: the court can compel the agency to act but has no power to say what the answer must be, so the decision it forces may be a denial.
Material change: A material change is a change in the facts after a petition is filed whose changed circumstances would have a natural tendency to influence, or are predictably capable of affecting, the decision. Because eligibility is fixed at the time of filing, a material change arising before the investor obtains conditional residence makes the petition unapprovable rather than amendable.
Matter of Ho: Matter of Ho is the 1998 EB-5 precedent decision that set the minimum contents of the comprehensive business plan a petition must carry when the ten jobs have not been created yet, and it is the decision behind the phrase a Matter of Ho compliant business plan, which USCIS itself uses to separate an actual project from a hypothetical one.
Matter of Izummi: Matter of Izummi is the 1998 EB-5 precedent decision, thirteen holdings long, that treats an agreement giving the investor a right to be repaid as a debt arrangement barred by 8 CFR 204.6(e), so the money was never a contribution of capital and was never at risk.
Matter of Soffici: Matter of Soffici is the 1998 EB-5 precedent decision, 22 I&N Dec. 158, holding that an investor who lends money to his own new commercial enterprise has not invested capital, that the enterprise's own secured borrowing is not his capital either, and that buying a going concern and changing the decor is not the restructuring the regulation requires.
Metropolitan statistical area: The county-based statistical geography that the Office of Management and Budget builds around an urban area of 50,000 or more. Land inside an MSA can never be a rural area for EB-5, however empty it looks, but a micropolitan statistical area is not an MSA and does not by itself defeat a rural claim.
Mezzanine debt: Mezzanine debt is a loan ranking below the senior lender and above every equity holder, and in a regional center loan model it is a common position for the loan the new commercial enterprise makes to the job creating entity. It describes that loan, not the investor's own stake, which has to be equity in the new commercial enterprise rather than debt.
Minimum investment amount: $800,000 for an investment in a targeted employment area or in an infrastructure project, and $1,050,000 for every other investment, set by 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(C) (INA 203(b)(5)(C)). The amount that applies is the one in force on the date the petition is filed.
Moody v. Noem: Moody v. Noem is the District of Colorado case in which the court, on 12 November 2025, stayed the EB-5 fees set by the 2024 USCIS fee rule, holding that the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 barred DHS from adjusting them, so USCIS went back to the amounts that had applied until 31 March 2024.
Motion to reopen or reconsider: A motion to reopen or reconsider is a request on Form I-290B, costing $800, that asks the USCIS office which made the latest decision in a case to look at it again, and it must be filed within 30 calendar days of that decision, or 33 days where the decision came by mail.
Multiplier: A multiplier is the ratio an input-output model applies to an initial change in a project's spending, earnings or jobs to estimate the total change in output, value added, earnings or jobs in a chosen industry and region.

N

NAICS code: A NAICS code is the North American Industry Classification System identifier for an industry, six digits at its most detailed level, and in EB-5 it fixes which input-output multipliers a job study applies to a project's spending and revenue.
National Visa Center: The Department of State office that holds an approved EB-5 petition, collects the visa fees and supporting documents, and notifies the investor as a visa number nears, in the gap between petition approval and the consular interview. It handles only investors who will apply for the visa abroad; an investor adjusting status inside the United States never passes through it.
Naturalization: Naturalization is the process by which a lawful permanent resident becomes a US citizen, requiring under 8 U.S.C. 1427(a) five years of continuous residence after lawful admission for permanent residence, physical presence for at least half of that time, three months in the state where the application is filed, and good moral character.
New commercial enterprise: A new commercial enterprise, usually shortened to NCE, is the for-profit entity formed in the United States that receives the EB-5 investor's capital and gives the investor an equity stake in return, and it is the enterprise the petition is built around.
Nonresident alien and resident alien: Resident alien and nonresident alien are the two United States income tax statuses a non-citizen can hold: a resident alien is taxed on worldwide income and files Form 1040, while a nonresident alien files Form 1040-NR and is taxed only on income effectively connected with a United States business and on United States source passive income.
Notice of Intent to Deny: A Notice of Intent to Deny, or NOID, is a written USCIS notice that the officer has reached a proposed refusal, setting out the grounds and allowing one answer within a period that can never exceed 30 days. On an EB-5 filing it is always discretionary, never something the petitioner can insist on, and USCIS may deny without issuing one.

O

OFAC check: An OFAC check is the search of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals List that 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(R) requires before USCIS may approve an EB-5 investor petition. The search must cover the investor and any associated employer, and it bars approval, not filing.
OFAC sanctions screening: OFAC sanctions screening is the search of a person against the Specially Designated Nationals List kept by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(R) makes a precondition of approving an EB-5 investor petition and which every US bank in the payment chain also runs on its own account.
Operating agreement: An operating agreement is the contract that governs a limited liability company serving as the EB-5 new commercial enterprise, setting voting, management, distributions, transfers and redemption. A limited partnership uses a limited partnership agreement for the same purpose. Neither is defined by the EB-5 statute or regulations, but the immigration rules test what they say.

P

Passive foreign investment company: A passive foreign investment company is any foreign corporation for a year in which 75 percent or more of its gross income is passive or at least 50 percent of its assets produce passive income, a test that catches almost every foreign mutual fund, ETF or unit trust an investor holds before moving to the United States.
Path of funds: Path of funds is the account by account trail documenting how the capital moved from its proven source into the new commercial enterprise, and it is a separate showing from proving that the source was lawful.
Per country limit: The 7 percent ceiling, in 8 U.S.C. 1152(a)(2), on the family and employment preference immigrant visas that natives of any single foreign state may receive in a fiscal year. It is measured against the family and employment preference totals combined rather than against each category separately, and dependent areas get 2 percent.
PERM labor certification: PERM labor certification is the Department of Labor process in which a US employer must show both that no able, willing, qualified and available US worker exists for the job and that hiring the foreign worker will not depress wages or working conditions, and it stands in front of most EB-2 and EB-3 green cards but is not required for EB-5 at all.
Persons involved with a regional center: A person involved with a regional center, a new commercial enterprise or an affiliated job-creating entity is anyone who holds substantive authority, directly or indirectly, over the pooling, investment, release or use of EB-5 money, and 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(H) makes that definition decide whose record can disqualify the whole project.
Pre-immigration tax planning: Pre-immigration tax planning is the practitioner label for steps an intending immigrant takes before the residency starting date, after which the same steps are taxed as those of a United States resident.
Preferred equity: Preferred equity is an ownership interest that ranks ahead of common equity for distributions and for the return of its capital, and behind the debt of the entity that issued it. In EB-5 the phrase most often describes the form the new commercial enterprise's investment in the job-creating entity takes.
Preferred return: A claim to be paid first out of an EB-5 project's distributions, ahead of the sponsor, up to a stated rate. Immigration law does not define the term, which EB-5 borrows from private fund practice, and the rate an offering quotes is a priority rather than a promise: capital carrying a guaranteed rate of return is excluded from the statutory meaning of capital. Rates quoted in EB-5 offerings typically sit far below what a commercial lender or ordinary equity investor in the same project would require.
Preponderance of the evidence: Preponderance of the evidence is the standard of proof in EB-5: the investor must show each element of eligibility is probably true, more likely than not, which USCIS reads as a greater than 50 percent chance. It is a far lower bar than proof beyond reasonable doubt, and lower than clear and convincing evidence.
Priority date: A priority date is the date USCIS properly receives a complete, signed and paid Form I-526 or I-526E, and it fixes the investor's place in the visa queue for their country of chargeability and their EB-5 category.
Priority date retention: Priority date retention is the carrying of an earlier petition's place in the visa queue over to a later petition, and in EB-5 it is much narrower than investors expect: an EB-2 or EB-3 date cannot be moved to EB-5, and USCIS applies it only to an amended investor petition filed after a regional center, new commercial enterprise or job-creating entity is terminated or debarred.
Priority processing for rural projects: The statutory instruction that USCIS prioritise the processing and adjudication of EB-5 petitions for rural areas, which moves a case up the assignment queue and changes nothing about the standard for approval.
Private placement memorandum: A private placement memorandum is the disclosure document an EB-5 issuer gives an investor before subscription, setting out the deal terms, the people behind it, the fees taken out of the money and the ways the money can be lost, and since 2022 a regional center must file it with USCIS along with the rest of its offering documents.
Processing time: Processing time is how long USCIS takes to adjudicate an EB-5 filing once it is received, a delay separate from the wait for a visa number, and the 2022 Act attached adjudication goals to it that govern how USCIS prices its fees rather than when it must decide.
Processing times: A USCIS processing time is a figure published for a form: the number of months it took USCIS to complete 80 percent of the cases it adjudicated over the previous six months. It reports finished work rather than the position of any case still waiting, so it moves every month, and USCIS says to treat it as a reference point and not an absolute measure of how long a case will take.
Program lapse: The period from 1 July 2021 to 14 May 2022 when no statute authorized the EB-5 regional center program, so no investor could file a regional center petition. USCIS rejected regional center petitions received on or after 1 July 2021 and suspended adjudication of those already pending. Standalone petitions were unaffected.
Project sponsor: Project sponsor, and its everyday synonym developer, is the industry name for the party that builds an EB-5 project and controls the entity receiving the capital and creating the jobs. Neither word appears in the EB-5 statute, the regulations or USCIS forms, so the label carries no legal standing of its own.

Q

Qualified Domestic Trust: A qualified domestic trust is the trust described in 26 U.S.C. 2056A that preserves the estate tax marital deduction where the surviving spouse is not a US citizen, and it defers the tax until the property leaves the trust rather than cancelling it.
Qualifying employee: A qualifying employee is a US citizen, a lawful permanent resident, or another immigrant lawfully authorized to be employed in the United States, and only their full-time positions count toward an investor's ten. The statute adds United States nationals to that list.
Quebec Immigrant Investor Program: The Quebec Immigrant Investor Program is Quebec's investor immigration route: a five year, interest free investment of CAD 1,000,000 that the province guarantees and repays in full, plus a non-refundable CAD 200,000 contribution, buys Quebec selection, while Canada alone decides permanent residence.

R

Record keeping requirement: 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(vii)(I) makes every regional center preserve the books, ledgers, records and other documentation of the regional center, the new commercial enterprise and the job-creating entity for five years beginning on the last day of the federal fiscal year in which the transactions occurred.
Redemption and buy-back option: A redemption or put right is a contract term letting the investor demand that the new commercial enterprise repay or repurchase the investment, and by statute it takes the money out of the definition of capital. A buy back option is the mirror image, exercisable by the enterprise rather than the investor, and it is the one such term the statute allows.
Redeployment: Redeployment is the reinvestment of an EB-5 investor's capital into a new use after the job-creating entity pays it back, so the money stays at risk for the rest of the period it must remain invested. USCIS calls it further deployment.
Reentry permit: A reentry permit is the travel document, applied for on Form I-131 and issued as Form I-327, that lets a permanent or conditional permanent resident spend up to two years outside the United States and apply for admission on return without a returning resident visa.
Regional center: A regional center is an economic unit, public or private, that USCIS has designated to sponsor pooled EB-5 investment within a defined, contiguous and limited geographic area, and it is the only route on which a petition may count indirect and induced jobs.
Regional center identifier: The Regional Center ID is the code USCIS assigns to a designated regional center and prints beside its name in the two public EB-5 tables, the approved centers list and the terminations list. It identifies the center on those lists, and it is none of the receipt numbers Form I-526E asks an investor to supply.
Regional Center Program: The Regional Center Program is the branch of EB-5 under which an investor files through a designated regional center and may count indirectly created jobs toward the ten-job requirement, and it is authorized through 30 September 2027.
Regional center termination: Regional center termination is USCIS ending a center's designation, after which the center may not solicit, generate or promote EB-5 investors or otherwise take part in the program, and its investors lose their petitions 180 days after USCIS notifies them unless they move to another center or another new commercial enterprise.
Regulation D and Rule 506: Regulation D is the Securities Act rule set whose Rule 506 lets an EB-5 issuer sell interests in the new commercial enterprise without registering them with the SEC, on conditions that fix who may buy, whether the deal may be advertised, and what the issuer must tell a purchaser who is not accredited.
Regulation S: Regulation S is the Securities Act rule set that treats offers and sales occurring outside the United States as falling outside the registration requirement of section 5, and it is the exemption most EB-5 offerings rely on when selling to investors abroad. The EB-5 statute expressly preserves it for regional centers.
REMI: REMI stands for Regional Economic Models, Inc., the firm whose Policy Insight simulation model the Department of Energy used to estimate direct and indirect job impacts in its State Energy Program evaluation. In EB-5 practice the name is used as shorthand for the model itself, which job studies name alongside RIMS II and IMPLAN.
Removal of conditions: Removal of conditions is the last EB-5 filing, Form I-829, submitted in the 90 days before the second anniversary of conditional residence, in which the investor shows the required capital was invested and kept invested for the period the law requires and that ten full-time jobs were created or can be expected within a reasonable time.
Request for Evidence: A Request for Evidence, or RFE, is a written USCIS notice that the record as filed does not establish eligibility and that named further evidence must reach USCIS by a stated deadline, which can never exceed twelve weeks and cannot be extended. It is a stage in the adjudication rather than a denial, but USCIS is under no duty to issue one before denying.
Residency starting date: The residency starting date is the day a foreign national becomes a United States resident for income tax purposes, so that worldwide income is taxed from that day on: the first day of presence as a lawful permanent resident under the green card test, the first day of presence in the year under the substantial presence test, or the earlier of the two where both tests are met.
Retrogression: Visa retrogression is a Visa Bulletin cut-off date moving backward, so a priority date that was current one month is not current the next, because demand in a category or country outran the visa numbers available.
RIMS II: RIMS II is the Bureau of Economic Analysis multiplier set that estimates how much total output, value added, earnings and employment a given change in final demand generates in a chosen group of US counties, and it is the model behind many EB-5 regional center job studies.
Rural area: One of the two routes into a targeted employment area: an area that is both outside every metropolitan statistical area and outside the outer boundary of any city or town of 20,000 or more people.

S

SAFE and China currency controls: SAFE is China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, and under its rules each individual has an annual facilitation quota of USD 50,000 equivalent, counted separately for settling foreign exchange into renminbi and for buying it, which may not be used for capital account items such as an overseas investment.
SARS tax compliance status PIN: The SARS tax compliance status PIN is the credential the South African Revenue Service issues through eFiling so that a bank, acting as an Authorised Dealer, can verify a taxpayer's compliance online before releasing money abroad, and no EB-5 sized transfer leaves South Africa without one.
SB-1 returning resident visa: An SB-1 is the returning resident special immigrant visa a consulate issues under 22 CFR 42.22 to a permanent resident who has stayed outside the United States too long to be readmitted on a green card or a reentry permit but who never abandoned the intention to return.
Schedule K-1: Schedule K-1 (Form 1065) is the annual statement a partnership issues to each partner reporting that partner's distributive share of the partnership's income, gains, losses, deductions and credits, which the partner must then report on their own tax return whether or not any cash was actually distributed.
Secured indebtedness: Debt that the investor is personally and primarily liable for and that is secured by the investor's own assets, which counts toward the EB-5 capital requirement only when the debt instrument itself is what goes into the enterprise, not when the investor contributes cash borrowed against those assets.
Securities and Exchange Commission: The Securities and Exchange Commission is the five member federal agency established by 15 U.S.C. 78d that enforces the federal securities laws over EB-5 offerings alongside USCIS and independently of it, and neither its rules nor its silence amounts to approval of any offering.
Securities attorney: A securities attorney is the lawyer who works on the EB-5 offering rather than the immigration petition, meaning the private placement memorandum, the subscription and operating agreements, and the exemption that lets the interests be sold without registration under section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933.
Securities fraud: Securities fraud in EB-5 is the offer or sale of an interest in a new commercial enterprise by means of an untrue statement or an omission of material fact, whether about the project, the returns or the immigration outcome, and it is the failure that can take the investor's money and immigration status together.
Securities law compliance: Securities law compliance is the EB-5 duty, written into 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(I) by the Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, that a regional center and every party associated with it obey federal and state securities law, certify that they do to be designated and again every year, and submit to United States jurisdiction over the offering.
Senior debt: Senior debt is the borrowing that ranks first in a project's capital stack, normally secured by a first lien on the project assets, and it is paid ahead of every junior claim, an EB-5 loan included, out of project cash flow and out of the collateral if the borrower defaults.
Side letter: A side letter is a separate written promise between an EB-5 project and one investor, sitting outside the main offering documents and changing what those documents say for that investor alone. It is a securities practice term rather than a USCIS one, and whether it costs the investor the petition depends on which promise it carries.
Site visit: A site visit is an in person inspection USCIS makes of a regional center, a new commercial enterprise, a job creating entity or a location where claimed jobs are said to sit, and since 15 March 2024 a performed site visit is one of the statutory conditions for removing conditions on residence.
Source of funds: Source of funds is the documentary showing that an EB-5 investor's required capital, and the money used to pay administrative costs and fees, was obtained from a lawful source and through lawful means, proved by records rather than by assertion.
Sources and uses: The table in an EB-5 business plan or offering that lists every source of money for a project against every category it will be spent on, with the two columns totalling the same figure.
State income tax: State income tax is a second layer of income tax that most US states charge their residents on all income wherever earned, with residence fixed by each state's own statute rather than by the federal residency tests or by immigration status, so an EB-5 family can become resident of a state on facts that have nothing to do with the green card.
Subordination and intercreditor agreement: A subordination agreement ranks one creditor's claim behind another's, and an intercreditor agreement sets the order of repayment, control and enforcement rights among two or more lenders to the same project. Neither is an EB-5 instrument. Both turn up in EB-5 because the new commercial enterprise's loan is usually the junior debt in the capital stack.
Subscription agreement: A subscription agreement is the contract by which an investor buys an interest in the new commercial enterprise, carrying the price, the investor's representations, the closing conditions and, where the offering uses one, the terms on which money leaves escrow.
Substantial presence test: The substantial presence test is the day count at 26 U.S.C. 7701(b)(3) that makes a foreign national a United States resident for income tax purposes: at least 31 days of presence in the current year, and 183 days across three years counting the current year in full, one third of the first preceding year and one sixth of the second. No green card is needed to meet it.
Sunset and reauthorization: The regional center program's visa authorization runs through 30 September 2027 under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E), and only an act of Congress can extend it.
Sustainment period: The period an EB-5 investor's capital must stay invested. For a petition filed on or after 15 March 2022 it is two years, and USCIS counts it from the date the capital was contributed to the new commercial enterprise and placed at risk, not from admission as a conditional resident. For a petition filed before that date it is instead the two years of conditional permanent residence.

T

Targeted employment area: A targeted employment area, or TEA, is a rural area or an area the Secretary of Homeland Security has designated as a high unemployment area, and an EB-5 investment placed in one requires $800,000 of capital rather than $1,050,000. An investment in an infrastructure project reaches the same $800,000 by a separate route without being a TEA.
Tax treaty: A tax treaty is a bilateral agreement that allocates taxing rights between two countries, and its residence tie-breaker article decides which of them may tax a person on worldwide income, a choice that for a green card holder reaches well past the tax bill into expatriation tax and into whether the green card itself survives.
Ten full-time jobs: Ten full-time jobs for qualifying employees is the EB-5 job creation requirement: each investor's capital must produce its own ten, which is the number an offering's economic report has to show for every investor it takes in.
Tenant occupancy: Tenant occupancy is a job counting method that credits an EB-5 regional center project with jobs attributed to the businesses expected to lease the commercial space the project creates or improves, counted on top of the jobs the project itself creates. It is open only to regional center projects, and only where the count rests on an economically and statistically valid methodology and the jobs are not existing jobs that have been relocated.
Termination of status and notice to appear: Termination of status is the end of an EB-5 investor's conditional permanent residence, which happens automatically as of the second anniversary if the Form I-829 is never filed or the interview is missed, and as of the decision date if the petition is denied. The notice to appear issued with it is the charging document, Form I-862, that places the investor in removal proceedings.
Threats to the national interest: Threats to the national interest is subparagraph (N) of the EB-5 statute, which obliges the Secretary of Homeland Security to deny or revoke any EB-5 petition, application or benefit, and to end the resident status it produced, once the Secretary decides in discretion that approval would be contrary to the national interest for reasons relating to public safety or national security.
Tranche: A slice of an EB-5 offering that closes separately from the rest, so a project raises its capital in stages rather than in a single closing. The word is market jargon: no statute, regulation or USCIS policy defines it, so a tranche means only what the offering documents make it mean.
Troubled business: A troubled business is a business in existence for at least two years whose net loss under generally accepted accounting principles, over the 12 or 24 months before the priority date on the investor's I-526 or I-526E, is at least 20 percent of its net worth before that loss.

U

Unreserved visas: The 68 percent of each fiscal year's EB-5 visa numbers that sit outside the rural, high unemployment and infrastructure set-asides, and go to investors whose project qualifies for none of the three.
Unsecured loan: An unsecured loan is borrowing that pledges none of the investor's own assets, and its cash proceeds can fund an EB-5 investment: since Zhang v. USCIS the collateral test in 8 CFR 204.6(e) reaches only a debt instrument contributed to the enterprise, not lawfully obtained cash that the investor happens to have borrowed.
US estate tax and domicile: US estate tax reaches the worldwide estate of a decedent who was a US citizen or a US domiciliary, and domicile is acquired by living in a place with no definite present intention of later leaving it, which a green card may evidence but does not by itself decide.
USCIS filing fee: The amount USCIS charges to file a given EB-5 form. The fees are set by regulation, under 8 U.S.C. 1356(m) and codified at 8 CFR 106.2, but for EB-5 forms the amount USCIS will actually accept is the one in its published schedule, Form G-1055, because the regulation's EB-5 figures are stayed.
USCIS Policy Manual Volume 6 Part G: The EB-5 part of the USCIS Policy Manual, titled Part G, Investors, sitting inside Volume 6, Immigrants; it runs to eight chapters and is cited as 6 USCIS-PM G.

V

Visa availability approach: The visa availability approach is the USCIS method of sorting pending Form I-526 petitions into monthly workflow queues according to whether a visa is available, or soon will be, for the investor's country of chargeability, so that filing order decides only the order within a queue. It began on 31 March 2020 and applies to pre-RIA Form I-526 petitions only.
Visa Bulletin: The Visa Bulletin is the monthly Department of State publication that reports, by preference category and country of chargeability, which priority dates have reached the front of the immigrant visa queue.
Visa set-asides: The reserved slices of each fiscal year's EB-5 visa numbers: 20 percent for investment in a rural area, 10 percent for a high unemployment area and 2 percent for infrastructure projects, so 32 percent reserved and 68 percent unreserved.

W

Worldwide income: Worldwide income is the rule that a United States resident for tax purposes, including a green card holder whose residence is still conditional, is taxed on income from every source anywhere in the world and not only on income arising inside the United States.
Worldwide level: The worldwide level is the annual ceiling on employment based immigrant visas fixed by 8 U.S.C. 1151(d) at 140,000 plus any family sponsored numbers left unused the previous year, and EB-5 draws a number not to exceed 7.1 percent of it, which is 9,940 in a year with no spillover.

Z

Zhang v. USCIS: Zhang v. USCIS is the class litigation that ended USCIS treating an EB-5 investor's invested loan proceeds as indebtedness requiring collateral: the district court set the denials aside on 30 November 2018 and the D.C. Circuit affirmed on 27 October 2020, holding that cash in 8 CFR 204.6(e) includes the proceeds of third party loans.

EB-5 glossary

What it decides

Forms

Jobs

Money and structure

Who does what

Process and timing

The programme

Risk and compliance

Tax and residency

Visas and the queue

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