Process and timing

Material change

Also called material changes.

A 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.

What it decides

USCIS does not approve a petition on facts that came into being after it was filed, so an investor asserting eligibility on a materially different set of facts must file a new petition rather than repair the old one, and only an approved petition carries its priority date across; a denied one establishes none. If the change lands after approval but before conditional residence, USCIS treats it as good and sufficient cause to issue a notice of intent to revoke and, if that is not overcome, good cause to revoke. Changes that unfold in line with the business plan as filed are not material, the standard example being jobs appearing on schedule after approval. Material change is also one of five exceptions to the binding effect of an approved Form I-956F, which is how a project's pivot reaches every investor in the offering, although the regional center may file an amendment within 30 days of the change and have the approved changes read into pending petitions. USCIS has long treated termination of the sponsoring regional center as a material change, which is why the statute needed a separate rescue for good faith investors.

Governed by USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 6, Part G, Chapter 3, Immigrant Petition Adjudication, Section C, Material Change, for the materiality test, the eligibility at filing rule, the notice of intent to revoke treatment and the business plan example; that chapter's own footnotes cite Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759, 770 to 772 (1988), Matter of Izummi, 22 I&N Dec. 169, 176 (Assoc. Comm. 1998), 8 CFR 103.2(b)(1), and 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(F)(ii)(III) and (F)(iii)(II); 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(F)(iii)(I) for the 30 day amendment deadline; 8 CFR 204.6(d) for the priority date point only, not for anything else in this entry; USCIS EB-5 Questions and Answers, last reviewed and updated 20 April 2026, for regional center termination as a material change and for 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(M) as the answer to it.

Where this is explained properly

Pages here that go into material change rather than mentioning it.

Related terms

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.
Denial and revocationDenial and revocation are the two ways USCIS refuses an EB-5 petition: a denial rejects a petition that has not established eligibility, and a revocation withdraws an approval already granted, which is why an approved EB-5 petition is never finally settled.
Priority dateA priority date is the date USCIS properly receives a complete, signed and paid Form I-526 or I-526E, and it fixes the investor's place in the visa queue for their country of chargeability and their EB-5 category.
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.
Comprehensive business planA 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.

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