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The programme

Regional center

Also called RC, EB-5 regional center, designated regional center.

A 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.

What it decides

Designation is sought on Form I-956, Application for Regional Center Designation. Each investment offering then needs its own Form I-956F, Application for Approval of an Investment in a Commercial Enterprise, which the regional center must file before any investor files Form I-526E for that offering. Filing is the gate, not approval, and waiting for the I-956F to be approved costs the investor a priority date, because the priority date is set by the date the investor's own petition is properly filed. Indirect jobs, which include the induced jobs created when direct and indirect employees spend their wages, may satisfy up to 90 percent of the ten job requirement. A separate and lower ceiling of 75 percent applies to indirect jobs estimated from construction activity lasting less than two years. An enterprise outside a regional center has no access to either figure, since its ten jobs must all be created directly. USCIS publishes only the name, the Regional Center ID and the states a center may operate in, never an address or a city.

Governed by 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(i) and (E)(iii) (designation, pooled investment, defined contiguous geographic area); 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(iv)(I) (90 percent indirect job cap) and (E)(iv)(II) (75 percent cap for construction activity lasting less than 2 years); 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(F)(i) (regional center must file for each offering before any alien files a petition); 8 CFR 204.6(e) (definition of regional center; indirect jobs count as employment in the Regional Center Program); 8 CFR 204.6(d) (priority date is the date the petition is properly filed); USCIS Policy Manual, 6 USCIS-PM G.2 (enterprise outside a regional center must create its jobs directly; induced jobs are a subset of indirect jobs); USCIS, EB-5 Immigrant Investor Regional Centers (https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-fifth-preference-eb-5/eb-5-immigrant-investor-regional-centers); USCIS, Approved EB-5 Immigrant Investor Regional Centers (https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-fifth-preference-eb-5/eb-5-immigrant-investor-regional-centers/approved-eb-5-immigrant-investor-regional-centers)

Where this is explained properly

Pages here that go into regional center rather than mentioning it.

Related terms

  • Regional Center ProgramThe Regional Center Program is the branch of EB-5 under which an investor files through a designated regional center and may count indirectly created jobs toward the ten-job requirement, and it is authorized through 30 September 2027.
  • 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.
  • Job-creating entityA job-creating entity, or JCE, is the United States business in a regional center EB-5 deal that receives the investment capital, either straight from the investors or through the new commercial enterprise, and is responsible for creating the ten full-time jobs each investor's petition must count.
  • 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5), cited in filings as INA 203(b)(5), is the statute that creates the EB-5 category and, since the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, carries the investment amounts, the visa set-asides, the job creation caps and grandfathering in the statute itself. It runs from subparagraph (A) to subparagraph (S).

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