Jobs

Tenant occupancy

Also called tenant occupancy methodology, tenant-occupancy, tenant jobs.

Tenant occupancy is a job counting method that credits an EB-5 regional center project with jobs attributed to the businesses expected to lease the commercial space the project creates or improves, counted on top of the jobs the project itself creates. It is open only to regional center projects, and only where the count rests on an economically and statistically valid methodology and the jobs are not existing jobs that have been relocated.

What it decides

USCIS issued operational guidance on the method on 20 December 2012, memorandum GM-602-0001, then rescinded it by policy alert PA-2018-03 on 15 May 2018, holding that the connection between EB-5 capital and a future tenant's employees was too tenuous. That rescission governs filings made from 15 May 2018 until the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act; a technical update of 26 July 2018 confirmed it did not reach petitions already pending on 15 May 2018, and USCIS still defers to I-526 and I-829 petitions tied to projects approved before that date, absent material change, fraud or misrepresentation, or legal deficiency. The RIA added a statutory basis, which USCIS applies from 14 May 2022: USCIS may include jobs attributed to prospective tenants occupying commercial real estate created or improved by capital investments, if the number rests on an economically and statistically valid methodology and the jobs are not existing jobs that have been relocated. The verb is may, not must, and USCIS left its 2018 reasoning against the 2012 methods printed in the Policy Manual, so the statutory route is narrower than the 2012 guidance was. Two limits are easy to miss. The provision sits in the regional center subparagraph, so a standalone I-526 investor cannot use it, and the claim is made on the regional center's Form I-956F project application rather than in each investor's own petition. Tenant employees work for neither the new commercial enterprise nor the job-creating entity, the two employers whose staff the statute lets a project treat as direct, so tenant jobs fall on the indirect side of the 90 percent indirect ceiling.

Governed by 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(v)(II)(aa), "Relocated jobs" (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1153&num=0&edition=prelim); 90 percent indirect ceiling and the definition of a direct job at 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(iv)(I), same source; 6 USCIS-PM G.2(D)(6), Guidance on Tenant Occupancy Methodology (https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-6-part-g-chapter-2); 6 USCIS-PM G.5(A)(4), Prospective Tenant Jobs, in Chapter 5 on Form I-956F project applications (https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-6-part-g-chapter-5); Operational Guidance for EB-5 Cases Involving Tenant-Occupancy, GM-602-0001, 20 December 2012 (https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/Interim-EB-5-Tenant-Occupancy-GM.pdf); Policy Alert PA-2018-03, Rescission of Guidance Regarding Tenant-Occupancy Methodology, 15 May 2018 (https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/policy-manual-updates/20180515-EB5TenantOccupancyMethodology.pdf); EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, Division BB of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Pub. L. 117-103, 136 Stat. 49, 1070, enacted 15 March 2022

Related terms

Job cushionA job cushion is the margin between the jobs a project's economic report forecasts and the jobs its investors need, which is ten full-time jobs per investor. The word is offering document usage: no statute or regulation defines a cushion or sets a minimum one.
Job allocationJob allocation is the division of a new commercial enterprise's qualifying full-time jobs among the EB-5 investors who petitioned on it, at least ten to each, under any reasonable agreement the investors have made. Where the documents are silent, USCIS allocates by the date each investor filed to remove conditions, so a shortfall falls on the last to file rather than on everyone in equal shares.

Checked against primary sources on 6 August 2026. Back to the glossary