Risk and compliance

Bankruptcy of the project

Also called project bankruptcy, bankruptcy.

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.

What it decides

Form I-829 turns on facts a later collapse cannot undo. USCIS asks that the required capital was contributed and placed at risk, that it was made available to the business most closely responsible for creating the jobs, that it was sustained across the sustainment period, and that at least ten full-time positions were created. It states expressly that it does not require those jobs still to exist when it adjudicates, provided they counted as permanent when created, and that it does not deny a petition solely because the business plan was not followed. A project that built and then failed can still support approval. What defeats a case is capital that never reached the job creating business, capital returned early, or jobs never created. Whether any money comes back depends on where the EB-5 position sits in the capital stack. A regional center must describe pending and resolved material bankruptcy proceedings in its annual statement and give an investor a redacted copy within 30 days of a request.

Governed by 8 CFR 216.6(a)(4)(iii) and (a)(4)(iv); 6 USCIS-PM G.7, Removal of Conditions, sections A and B, last revised by the policy alert of 26 October 2023, which states that USCIS does not require the jobs still to be in existence at adjudication if they were permanent when created, does not deny solely for departure from the business plan, and lists the four things an investor must still show after a change of course; 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(G)(i)(IV) for the annual statement disclosure of pending and resolved material bankruptcy proceedings and (G)(iv) for the investor's right to a redacted copy within 30 days. Chapter 7 still carries the Behring alert and pre-2019 investment figures, so it is reliable for the job creation and sustainment points cited here and unreliable on amounts.

Where this is explained properly

Pages here that go into bankruptcy of the project rather than mentioning it.

Related terms

Capital at riskThe 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.
Sustainment periodThe 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.
Ten full-time jobsTen 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.
Default and foreclosureDefault 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.
Due diligenceDue 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.

Checked against primary sources on 10 August 2026. Back to the glossary