Process and timing

Exemplar

Also called exemplar petition, exemplar Form I-526, approved exemplar.

An exemplar was a sample Form I-526 filed with a Form I-924 for an actual project, so that USCIS reviewed the enterprise's organizational and transactional documents once and gave that determination deference in later investor petitions. USCIS now uses the word in the past tense: there is no exemplar filing after 15 March 2022.

What it decides

Footnote 37 to USCIS Policy Manual Volume 6, Part G, Chapter 5 defines it in the past tense: the term exemplar referred to a sample Immigrant Petition by Alien Investor filed with Form I-924 for an actual project, and before 15 March 2022 that proposal contained copies of the commercial enterprise's organizational and transactional documents, which USCIS reviewed for compliance. The RIA left no equivalent filing. Form I-956F carries the same material by statute, because 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(F)(i)(IV) requires the project application to include the subscription, investment, partnership and operating agreements, the private placement memorandum, term sheets and marketing materials, and (F)(ii) makes approval binding on later petitions absent fraud, a threat to public safety or national security, a material change affecting eligibility, undisclosed evidence, or a material mistake of law or fact. An old exemplar approval keeps that same binding force. So when an offering advertises an approved exemplar, ask whether it means a pre-2022 Form I-924 approval or a current Form I-956F approval.

Governed by USCIS Policy Manual Volume 6, Part G, Chapter 5, Project Applications, footnote 37 for the definition and Section C, Subsection 1 for the binding effect; 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(F)(i)(IV) and (F)(ii) on the govinfo US Code mirror. The same chapter page carries an appendix, Regional Center Program Prior to March 15, 2022, which describes exemplar filings in the present tense and says officer determinations on them are accorded deference in subsequent filings; that appendix is expressly labelled as pre-RIA content and is good for what the practice was, not for what USCIS does now.

Where this is explained properly

Pages here that go into exemplar rather than mentioning it.

Related terms

Form I-924 and I-924AForm I-924, Application For Regional Center Designation Under the Immigrant Investor Program, and its annual companion Form I-924A, Annual Certification of Regional Center, are the pre-2022 regional center filings that USCIS has archived and no longer accepts, because the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 repealed the appropriations provision they ran on.
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.
Capital investment projectA capital investment project is the specific undertaking that a regional center's business plan describes and that the pooled investor capital funds, whether it is carried out by a separate job-creating entity or by the new commercial enterprise itself. It is the project a Form I-956F is approved for, not the entity the investor subscribes into.
Material changeA material change is a change in the facts after a petition is filed whose changed circumstances would have a natural tendency to influence, or are predictably capable of affecting, the decision. Because eligibility is fixed at the time of filing, a material change arising before the investor obtains conditional residence makes the petition unapprovable rather than amendable.
DeferenceDeference is the rule that USCIS stands by a determination it has already made about an EB-5 project when it adjudicates later filings resting on the same facts, so the project is not argued again investor by investor. Since the 2022 Act it is statutory: an approved Form I-956F binds the adjudication of every investor in that offering.

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