Jobs
Comprehensive business plan
Also called EB-5 business plan, Matter of Ho compliant 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.
What it decides
8 CFR 204.6(j)(4)(i) offers two ways to show the ten jobs: documents for ten qualifying employees already hired, or, under subclause (B), a comprehensive business plan showing that, due to the nature and projected size of the enterprise, the need for not fewer than ten qualifying employees will result within the next two years, including approximate dates when they will be hired. The content standard is Matter of Ho, 22 I&N Dec. 206, 213, which USCIS reads to call for a market analysis naming competing businesses and comparing their products and pricing, the permits and licenses obtained, the production process and supply sources, marketing strategy, organizational structure and personnel experience, staffing requirements with a hiring timetable and job descriptions for every position, and sales, cost and income projections with the basis for them. No single element is mandatory and the plan is weighed in its totality, but most importantly it must be credible. USCIS applies that standard to standalone petitions filed at any time and to regional center petitions filed before 15 March 2022. A regional center offering since then carries its plan in the project application, where the stated minimum is only a description of the business, its products or services, and its objectives, plus the form of the investment into the job-creating entity.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into comprehensive business plan rather than mentioning it.
Related terms
- Matter of HoMatter 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.
- 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.
- Form I-956FForm 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.
- Economic impact reportAn 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.
- New commercial enterpriseA 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.
Checked against primary sources on . Back to the glossary