Jobs
75 percent cap on short construction jobs
Also called 75 percent limit, construction job cap, two year construction rule.
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.
What it decides
8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(iv)(II), headed "Construction activity lasting less than 2 years", tightens the general rule in clause (iv)(I) that a regional center investor may satisfy up to 90 percent of the ten-job requirement with indirect jobs. Where the jobs estimated to be created come from construction activity lasting less than two years, the ceiling on indirect jobs drops to 75 percent of the requirement in 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(A)(ii), so at most 7.5 of the ten jobs, and the balance must be direct jobs. A companion clause then discounts those direct jobs. Under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(v)(II)(cc), direct jobs created by construction activity lasting less than two years count only after multiplying the estimate by the fraction of the two-year period the construction lasts, so an 18 month build yields three quarters of its estimated direct construction jobs. USCIS applies the two clauses together. Construction lasting two years or longer falls outside both, and the ordinary 90 percent limit governs, which is why the modelled duration of a build matters in an economic report. Both clauses arrived with the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 and reach petitions filed on or after 14 May 2022, being 60 days after the 15 March 2022 enactment. One sentence in the USCIS Policy Manual dates the construction limits to 15 May 2022, while the rest of that chapter uses 14 May 2022 for the same set of amendments.
Related terms
- 90 percent cap on indirect jobsThe 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.
- Indirect jobsIndirect 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.
- Induced jobsInduced 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.
- Direct jobsA 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.
Checked against primary sources on . Back to the glossary