Money and structure

Source of funds

Also called SOF, Lawful source of funds.

Source of funds is the documentary showing that an EB-5 investor's required capital, and the money used to pay administrative costs and fees, was obtained from a lawful source and through lawful means, proved by records rather than by assertion.

What it decides

Two evidence lists exist and the filing date picks which one applies. For petitions filed before 14 May 2022, 8 CFR 204.6(j)(3) asks for foreign business registration records, tax returns filed within five years, evidence identifying any other source of capital, and certified copies of judgments and pending actions from the past fifteen years, and it reaches the capital only. For petitions filed on or after 14 May 2022, 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(L) governs and reaches further: personal and entity tax returns filed during the past seven years, judgment evidence with no time limit at all, pending governmental civil, criminal and administrative actions and private civil actions, and the identity of every person who transfers money into the United States on the investor's behalf to meet the capital requirement. It also covers the administrative costs and fees, not just the investment. The standard is preponderance of the evidence, and Matter of Ho shows what fails it: an investor who said he had practised medicine and held $1.4 million in liquid assets, with no documents behind either claim, did not carry his burden.

Governed by 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(L) (INA 203(b)(5)(L)), heading "Source of funds", added by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 and effective for petitions filed on or after 14 May 2022, which is 60 days after the 15 March 2022 enactment; 8 CFR 204.6(j)(3), still carrying the superseded five year and fifteen year windows for earlier petitions; USCIS Policy Manual, 6 USCIS-PM G.2(A)(4) and its footnote 52, page last updated 26 February 2025; Matter of Ho, 22 I&N Dec. 206, 210 (Assoc. Comm. 1998). The statute is good for the current list and the effective date; it says nothing about the standard of proof, which comes from the Policy Manual at 6 USCIS-PM G.2(E) citing Matter of Chawathe.

Where this is explained properly

Pages here that go into source of funds rather than mentioning it.

Related terms

Path of fundsPath of funds is the account by account trail documenting how the capital moved from its proven source into the new commercial enterprise, and it is a separate showing from proving that the source was lawful.
Gifted fundsGifted capital counts toward the EB-5 minimum investment only if the gift was made in good faith and not to get around the limits on permissible sources of capital, and only if the donor's own lawful source of funds is documented to the standard the investor has to meet.
Borrowed fundsBorrowed funds are money an EB-5 investor is lent and then contributes as capital. Since Zhang v. USCIS, USCIS evaluates invested loan proceeds as a cash contribution, not indebtedness, so the loan need not be collateralized, but for petitions filed on or after 14 May 2022 the statute counts them only if the loan was made in good faith and not to circumvent the limits on permissible sources.
CapitalCapital is the cash and tangible assets an EB-5 investor contributes to the new commercial enterprise. Two texts define it: the statute, which governs petitions filed on or after 15 March 2022, and the older regulation, whose conditions on debt USCIS still applies alongside the statute.
Matter of HoMatter of Ho is the 1998 EB-5 precedent decision that set the minimum contents of the comprehensive business plan a petition must carry when the ten jobs have not been created yet, and it is the decision behind the phrase a Matter of Ho compliant business plan, which USCIS itself uses to separate an actual project from a hypothetical one.

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