Yes, you can borrow the money for an EB-5 investment. USCIS accepts borrowed funds as qualifying capital when two conditions hold: you are personally and primarily liable for the debt, and the loan is not secured by the assets of the new commercial enterprise you are investing in. The loan does not have to be secured at all. Current policy treats cash you receive from a lender as your own cash, so an unsecured personal loan can fund the $800,000, provided you can document that the lender's money was lawfully obtained and that the debt is genuinely yours to repay.
What the regulation counts as capital
The definition sits in 8 CFR 204.6, the regulation governing employment creation petitions. Capital means cash and other tangible property, and it expressly includes indebtedness secured by assets you own, on two conditions: you must be personally and primarily liable, and the assets of the new commercial enterprise must not be used to secure any part of the debt. All capital is valued at fair market value in United States dollars.
Read those two conditions again, because they do all the work. Personal and primary liability means the lender can come after you, not merely after the collateral or after some other party. The prohibition on using enterprise assets means you cannot pledge the very thing you are buying.
Secured loans against your own assets
This is the traditional route and it remains the cleanest. Investors mortgage a property they own, draw on a line of credit secured by a securities portfolio, or pledge shares in a company they control. The proceeds arrive as cash in the investor's account and are wired onward to the fund.
What USCIS looks for here is ordinary and unglamorous. It wants the promissory note, the security agreement, evidence that you own the pledged asset, a credible valuation, and a clean trail from the loan disbursement into your account and out to the enterprise. It also wants to see that repayment is plausible from your own resources rather than from a promised return on the EB-5 investment itself.
Unsecured loans now qualify
For years USCIS insisted that borrowed capital had to be secured by the investor's own assets. Federal litigation ended that position, and the agency updated its guidance to treat the cash proceeds of a loan as cash in the investor's hands. The practical effect is that an unsecured personal loan, including a family loan or a bank facility granted on your income and standing rather than on collateral, can fund an EB-5 investment.
The current treatment of loan proceeds is set out in Volume 6, Part G of the USCIS Policy Manual. Do not take the change as a relaxation of scrutiny. Removing the collateral requirement moved the pressure onto two other questions: whether the loan is real, and where the lender got the money. Both are answered with documents.
Source of funds does not stop at your bank account
When you borrow, USCIS traces the path back through the lender. A commercial bank loan from a regulated institution is usually accepted on the loan documents alone. A loan from an individual, a family member or a company you are connected to invites a full source of funds review of that person's wealth, on top of your own. People routinely underestimate this. A friendly loan from a cousin can turn into a request for that cousin's tax filings, property records and bank history going back years.
Expect to produce the note, the transfer records, evidence of any interest paid, and a repayment schedule you can actually service. Adjudicators notice when a loan carries no interest, no maturity date and no realistic repayment plan, because those features suggest the arrangement is not a loan at all. A finding like that is very hard to repair after filing.
Loan structures that cause trouble
- A loan secured by the enterprise or the project. If any asset of the new commercial enterprise secures the debt, the capital does not qualify. Pledging your own interest in the fund sits close enough to that line that most counsel refuse to structure it.
- Non-recourse debt. If you can walk away by surrendering the collateral and owe nothing further, you are not personally and primarily liable in the way the regulation requires.
- A loan from the project to you. Offers to finance part of your own subscription, sometimes marketed as an installment or bridge arrangement by a party connected to the deal, deserve deep skepticism. Ask your attorney before you engage, not afterwards.
- A corporate loan taken by a company you own, where the company is the borrower. If your business borrows and then transfers money to you, the money reaching you is a distribution or a shareholder loan, and it must be documented as whichever it actually is.
Borrowing does not weaken the at risk requirement
A common worry is that owing money somehow makes the investment less at risk. It does not. Your obligation to repay a third party lender is separate from the enterprise's use of your capital. What does undermine the at risk requirement is a guarantee, a redemption right or a promised buyback inside the EB-5 deal itself. Those provisions are the problem, not your mortgage.
Do bear in mind the timing mismatch. The reform act requires your capital to remain invested for a sustainment period of at least two years, while conditional residence lasts two years and the full process from filing to removal of conditions usually runs considerably longer. If your loan matures before capital comes back, you carry that gap yourself. Model it honestly, and factor in the fees described in The Real Cost of EB-5: Fees and Expenses Beyond the Investment, because the $800,000 is not the whole bill.
Do not confuse your loan with the project's loan model
Two entirely different things are called an EB-5 loan. One is the loan you take personally to raise your capital. The other is the loan the new commercial enterprise makes to the developer, which is the dominant way pooled EB-5 money reaches a project. The second determines your risk, your repayment priority and your realistic exit. It is compared with the equity alternative in EB-5 Investment Models: Loan vs Equity Structures, and how much protection either version gives you depends in turn on the route you take, weighed in Regional Center vs Direct EB-5 2026: Which Path Is Safer for Your $800K?. When a marketer says a project is a loan deal, they mean the second kind of loan, and it says nothing about whether you may borrow to participate.
Getting the documentation right the first time
Loan based source of funds is one of the most heavily examined parts of an EB-5 filing, and it is the part where good preparation clearly changes outcomes. Assemble the note, security documents, valuations, lender source of funds evidence, bank statements showing each transfer and a repayment plan, and have counsel review the package before it goes anywhere near your Form I-526E filing. The same file will resurface years later when you file Form I-829 to remove conditions on residence, so keep it intact and keep proof of every repayment you make in the meantime. If you are still deciding whether you need professional help for this, Do You Really Need an EB-5 Lawyer in 2026? What Good Attorneys Do is the honest answer: for a borrowed investment, yes.