Money and structure
EB-5 Integrity Fund
Also called Integrity Fund, integrity fee.
A US Treasury fund created by 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(J) to pay for EB-5 oversight, financed by an annual fee on every designated regional center plus $1,000 collected with each initial Form I-526E.
What it decides
The annual fee is $20,000, or $10,000 from a regional center with 20 or fewer total investors in the preceding fiscal year in its new commercial enterprises, and it falls due on 1 October. USCIS approximates that investor count by taking a center's pending and approved Form I-526 and Form I-526E petitions and subtracting its Form I-829 petitions. Payment goes through Pay.gov and no other method. A center that pays through 31 October owes no penalty; the statute directs USCIS to impose a reasonable penalty after that, but USCIS has published no penalty rates and has said it will not charge the late penalty for fees due in fiscal year 2026. Non-payment within 90 days requires USCIS to terminate the designation, so USCIS rejects fee payments sent after 30 December and moves to terminate any center unpaid on that date, first issuing a notice of intent to terminate and letting the center show the fee was paid in the proper amount. On the investor side, Form G-1055 edition 05/29/26 requires $1,000 with an initial Form I-526E filed on or after 1 October 2022 and states that the amount does not apply to an amendment request; the fee attaches to each initial petition rather than once per investor. Standalone I-526 filers pay nothing to the fund, because the statute attaches the $1,000 only to petitions for classification under subparagraph (E), the regional center program. At least one third of the money must fund investigations based outside the United States.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into eb-5 integrity fund rather than mentioning it.
Related terms
- Direct EB-5Direct EB-5, which USCIS calls the standalone program, is an EB-5 investment made without a regional center and filed on Form I-526, where only the full-time jobs created by the new commercial enterprise itself, or by its wholly owned subsidiaries, count toward the ten.
- Regional centerA regional center is an economic unit, public or private, that USCIS has designated to sponsor pooled EB-5 investment within a defined, contiguous and limited geographic area, and it is the only route on which a petition may count indirect and induced jobs.
- GrandfatheringThe rule at 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S) that requires DHS to keep processing a regional center investor's petition, and to keep visas flowing to approved ones, even if the legislation authorizing the regional center program expires, provided the petition was filed on or before 30 September 2026.
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