Money and structure
High employment area
Also called high employment TEA.
A high employment area is a part of a metropolitan statistical area that, at the time of investment, is not a targeted employment area and has an unemployment rate significantly below the national average. It is the statutory opposite of a high unemployment area, but it carries no price premium today: an investment there requires the standard $1,050,000, the same as any investment outside a targeted employment area or infrastructure project.
What it decides
8 CFR 204.6(e) defines the term as a part of a metropolitan statistical area that at the time of investment is not a targeted employment area and is an area with an unemployment rate significantly below the national average unemployment rates. Because the area must sit inside a metropolitan statistical area, a rural area can never be one. That regulatory definition was already in the Code of Federal Regulations on 20 November 2019, so it survived the vacatur described below. The money is where readers go wrong. 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(C)(iv) lets the Secretary of Homeland Security specify an amount greater than, but not greater than 3 times, the standard amount in clause (i) as adjusted. DHS has never used that power. In the proposed rule at 91 FR 40676, DHS says of itself that it has "never raised the investment amount for such an area". So an investment in a high employment area today requires $1,050,000 under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(C)(i), the same figure as any other investment outside a targeted employment area or infrastructure project, and that figure adjusts for inflation for the first time on 1 January 2027. 8 CFR 204.6(f)(3) still shows $1,800,000, and it should be ignored. That text came from the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Modernization rule, 84 FR 35750 (24 July 2019), effective 21 November 2019, which was vacated in Behring Regional Center LLC v. Wolf, No. 20-cv-09263-JSC (N.D. Cal. 22 June 2021), 544 F. Supp. 3d 937. DHS never published the amendment removing the vacated text, so the stale number sits in the CFR. Read it carefully before drawing a conclusion from it: that rule set the high employment figure equal to the standard figure, both $1,800,000, and the pre-2019 text set both at $1,000,000. Neither version charged a premium for a high employment area. A premium is now proposed, and it is not law. The proposed rule published 2 July 2026, 91 FR 40676, would remove and reserve 8 CFR 204.6, define a high employment area at proposed 8 CFR 204.401 as a census tract, or contiguous census tracts, in a metropolitan statistical area where the new commercial enterprise is principally doing business and where the national average rate of unemployment is at least 150 percent of the rate in that area, and set the amount at $1,400,000 at proposed 8 CFR 204.407(b)(3), thereafter adjusting to 133 percent of the standard amount. It would reach only petitions filed 60 days or more after a final rule. Comments close 31 August 2026. Until a final rule issues, a high employment area costs more than a targeted employment area and no more than the standard amount.
Related terms
- Targeted employment areaA targeted employment area, or TEA, is a rural area or an area the Secretary of Homeland Security has designated as a high unemployment area, and an EB-5 investment placed in one requires $800,000 of capital rather than $1,050,000. An investment in an infrastructure project reaches the same $800,000 by a separate route without being a TEA.
- High unemployment areaOne of the two routes into a targeted employment area: a census tract, or contiguous census tracts, that the Secretary of Homeland Security designates as a high unemployment area because the weighted average unemployment rate across them is at least 150 percent of the national average. The other route is a rural area.
- Rural areaOne of the two routes into a targeted employment area: an area that is both outside every metropolitan statistical area and outside the outer boundary of any city or town of 20,000 or more people.
- 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.
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