Money and structure
Census tract
Also called census tracts, contiguous tracts.
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.
What it decides
8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(B)(ii) lets the Secretary of Homeland Security, or a DHS employee the Secretary designates, designate as a high unemployment area the census tract or contiguous census tracts in which the new commercial enterprise is principally doing business, if the weighted average unemployment rate across them, on the labor force employment measure for each tract, is not less than 150 percent of the national average. One ring of directly adjacent tracts may be added, and each added tract then counts in that weighted average by the size of its own labor force, so a small high unemployment tract moves the figure only a little. For a regional center investment USCIS looks to where the job-creating entity is principally doing business rather than the new commercial enterprise. That one ring is the whole reach: strings of tracts drawn across a city came from the state designations, which applied only to petitions filed before 15 March 2022. The designation runs two years, from the date the regional center files Form I-956F or, for a standalone investor, from the time of investment, and may be renewed for further two year periods while the area still qualifies. No other federal official and no state or local official may make one. An investor who invested $800,000 while a designation was in effect does not have to add money if it later expires. Census tracts play no part in the rural route, which turns on metropolitan statistical area boundaries and a population line of 20,000.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into census tract rather than mentioning it.
Related terms
- Metropolitan statistical areaThe 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.
- 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.
- USCIS Policy Manual Volume 6 Part GThe 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.
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