Money and structure

Administrative fee

Also called admin fee, regional center fee, subscription 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.

What it decides

The administrative fee sits outside the qualifying investment and must be paid in addition to it. The full amount of the investment has to be made available to the businesses most closely responsible for creating the employment the petition rests on, so where there is a separate job-creating entity, USCIS treats payment by the new commercial enterprise of administrative fees, management fees, attorneys' fees, finders' fees, syndication fees and other expenses that erode the capital reaching that entity as not counting toward the $800,000 or $1,050,000. For petitions filed on or after 14 May 2022 the investor must also prove the lawful source of the money used to pay the fee, because the statute reaches the required capital "and any funds used to pay administrative costs and fees associated with the alien's investment". No immigration provision fixes the amount, caps it, or makes it refundable; refund terms, if any, come from the subscription documents. Separately, compensation paid to agents, finders and broker dealers involved in the offering must be referenced in the investment and offering documents the regional center files with Form I-956F, and each investor petition must carry a disclosure, signed by the investor, of all fees, ongoing interest and other compensation paid in connection with the investment to any person the regional center or new commercial enterprise knows has received or will receive it.

Governed by 6 USCIS-PM G.2(A)(2), "Made Available", and G.2(A)(4) (https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-6-part-g-chapter-2); Matter of Izummi, 22 I&N Dec. 169, 178-79 (Assoc. Comm'r 1998); 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(L)(i); 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(F)(i)(IV)(dd) and (b)(5)(K)(iv) (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1153&num=0&edition=prelim)

Where this is explained properly

Pages here that go into administrative fee rather than mentioning it.

Related terms

USCIS filing feeThe 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.
EscrowEscrow 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.
CapitalCapital 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.

Checked against primary sources on 6 August 2026. Back to the glossary