The EB-5 immigrant investor program hands a US green card to a foreign national who puts $800,000 into a new commercial enterprise inside a Targeted Employment Area, or $1,050,000 anywhere else, and whose capital creates at least 10 full time jobs for American workers. Conditional residence comes first and runs two years. Only when USCIS accepts proof that the jobs exist and the money stayed at risk does the card become permanent. Congress created this fifth employment based preference in 1990, and the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 rewrote most of the rules an investor lives under today.
Location decides whether you pay $800,000 or $1,050,000
A Targeted Employment Area is either a rural area or a census tract grouping where unemployment sits at 150 percent of the national average or higher. An investment inside one costs $800,000. Outside, the minimum is $1,050,000. Sponsors understand that arithmetic perfectly, so nearly every marketed offering is engineered to qualify as a TEA, and a $1,050,000 deal almost never appears on an agent's list.
Both thresholds are indexed for inflation, with the first adjustment due on 1 January 2027.
Capital is broader than a wire transfer. Under 8 CFR 204.6, the core EB-5 regulation, equipment and other tangible property count at fair market value, though anything that is not cash draws harder questions from an officer. Our page on how TEA designations work covers how a sponsor proves the designation and when it expires.
Where the 10 jobs come from
Each investor is charged with 10 full time positions, meaning at least 35 hours per week for a qualifying US worker. A direct investor counts real people on real payroll. A regional center investor counts modeled jobs, because the statute permits indirect and induced employment estimated by an economist from construction outlays and operating revenue.
That single difference explains why the regional center model carries most of the volume. Hiring 10 employees in a restaurant is slow and fragile work. Take a hotel with a $60 million construction budget instead: an input output model can attribute several hundred jobs to that spending, and the total is divided among the investors in the pool.
Construction that runs under two years cannot generate qualifying direct jobs, although the economist can still capture the same spending as indirect employment. Read the model itself. The summary slide is marketing.
Two structures, two very different burdens
- Regional center. You file Form I-526E and invest through a pooled new commercial enterprise, staying passive as a limited partner or non managing member. Indirect jobs count toward your 10. Sponsor fees are real and rarely visible in the headline return.
- Direct investment. You file Form I-526 and govern the business yourself. Ten W-2 employees have to appear on payroll records. No economist can help you here.
A regional center buys you time and costs you control. Whether that trade suits you depends on facts about your own life, which is why the eligibility questions beyond the money are worth reading before you shortlist any projects.
Forms you will file, in order
- Form I-526E, the regional center investor petition opens the case. Direct investors file Form I-526 instead.
- Form I-485 adjusts status for people already lawfully inside the United States. Since 2022 it can be filed concurrently with the petition when a visa number is available. Everyone else goes through a consulate.
- Form I-829 removes the conditions, filed in the 90 days before the two year card expires.
Filing fees change by rulemaking, so check the current USCIS fee schedule rather than a brochure. Budget separately for legal fees and for the sponsor's administrative fee, which is usually $50,000 or more and is often not refundable.
How long does an EB-5 green card take?
Longer than any sales deck suggests. Petition adjudication alone runs many months, and after approval you still need an immigrant visa number, which is where nationality decides everything. Per country limits cap a single birth country at 7 percent of the annual total, so applicants born in mainland China or India have historically waited behind a priority date while others moved straight through.
The 2022 act reserved 20 percent of annual EB-5 numbers for rural projects and 10 percent for high unemployment areas. Another 2 percent goes to infrastructure. Those reserved categories have their own shorter queues, and a rural filing also receives priority processing by statute.
Then add the two years of conditional residence and the I-829 wait on top of everything above. Before accepting anyone's timeline estimate, look at the government's own immigration and citizenship data reports.
The 2022 reform act rewrote the rulebook
Public Law 117-103 reauthorized the regional center program through 30 September 2027 and bolted a compliance regime onto it. Sponsors now register on Form I-956 and file a project application on Form I-956F before any investor can petition on that project. There is an integrity fund. Audits and unannounced site visits became mandatory rather than discretionary, and a regional center that loses its designation drags its investors into a mess that takes years to unwind.
One provision matters more than the rest when you are deciding whether to act this year or next. Petitions filed by 30 September 2026 are grandfathered, which means they continue to be processed even if the regional center program lapses afterwards.
For how the program reached this point, including the 2015 to 2022 period of repeated short term extensions, see our account of the 2022 reform act and what it changed for investors.
Assume the brochure understates the risk
Your money must stay genuinely at risk. A guaranteed buyback can sink an I-829 even where the project succeeded commercially and every job was created on schedule. So can a redemption right, or a note that repays before the jobs exist. Sponsors also redeploy capital into a second asset once the first loan repays, and those redeployment terms deserve the same scrutiny as the original deal.
Projects fail. Loans default.
Any promoter who promises approval or a fixed return is telling you something useful about themselves. Read the myths that lead to USCIS denials before wiring anything, and note that suspected fraud can be reported through the USCIS fraud reporting channel.
Is EB-5 the right instrument for you?
EB-5 fits someone holding $800,000 of genuinely spare, fully documentable capital who wants residence without an employer sponsor. A family whose child is approaching 21 and about to age out of a parent's work visa is the other classic candidate. It fits badly anyone who needs that money back on a fixed schedule, because nobody can honestly promise when it returns.
Compare it honestly against the alternatives first. Our page on the real advantages and drawbacks of the investor route sets out the case against, and the step by step EB-5 process from petition to permanent card shows what the next four or five years of your life would actually involve.