EB-5 costs $800,000 in a Targeted Employment Area, or $1,050,000 outside one, and your money has to create 10 full time American jobs. What you receive is a green card that becomes citizenship after five years. New Zealand's Active Investor Plus visa asks for more capital, NZD 5 million in the growth category or NZD 10 million in the balanced category, and asks for no job creation whatsoever. You get residence in a country of roughly five million people, plus four years during which most of your foreign income is left alone by the tax office. Different prices. Very different lives.
What each program costs to enter
The American number is the smaller one, and it is also the one you are least likely to see returned in full.
Your $800,000 goes into a new commercial enterprise and must sit at risk. 8 CFR 204.6, the EB-5 petition regulation, forbids any guaranteed return or promised buyback, and under the 2022 statute it has to stay invested for at least two years counted from the day it goes into that enterprise. Layered on top of the investment are the costs nobody puts in the brochure: a Regional Center administrative fee that commonly runs $50,000 to $70,000, immigration counsel, the USCIS filing fee for Form I-526E, a $1,000 Integrity Fund contribution. Most of that administrative fee is gone the day you wire it.
Compare that with New Zealand, where the structure looks more like a portfolio than a fee. Growth category applicants commit NZD 5 million for three years into direct investments or managed funds. Balanced category applicants commit NZD 10 million for five years across a wider set of assets, including bonds and listed shares, which carries a materially lower risk profile than a single American construction loan. Your capital stays yours throughout. At any plausible exchange rate, NZD 5 million is several times the EB-5 entry price.
Job creation is the American price of admission
Ten jobs per investor. That requirement has barely moved since 1990 and it is what makes EB-5 harder than a straight capital transfer.
Full time means at least 35 hours a week for a qualifying employee. Combinations of part time positions do not count even where the hours add up neatly, although a job share, meaning two people who split one full time position, does qualify. Regional Center investors may count indirect and induced jobs generated by an economic model, which is why the large majority of petitioners use one. Direct investors count actual payroll instead.
Proof arrives at the end. Your I-829 petition, filed at the close of conditional residence, is where job creation gets tested, and derivative family members are included on that single petition rather than filing their own. Nothing comparable exists in the New Zealand rules. Hold the money for the required term and satisfy a modest presence requirement. That is the whole test.
How long until nobody can send you away
Both countries make you wait, in different currencies. EB-5 delivers two years of conditional permanent residence first. Approval of the I-829 removes those conditions as of the second anniversary of the day you obtained conditional residence. Five years as a permanent resident opens naturalization on Form N-400. Then there is the queue. The 7 percent per country cap in section 1152 of title 8 means an investor born in mainland China or India can wait years for a visa number before any of this starts, which is exactly the problem the rural and high unemployment set-asides were built to relieve.
New Zealand grants residence up front under the Active Investor Plus category, then moves you to a permanent resident visa once the investment conditions are met, with citizenship available after five years subject to a demanding physical presence test. Presence is where the two systems diverge hardest. Growth applicants owe 21 days in New Zealand across the three year term, balanced applicants 105 days across five. America expects you to live there, and long absences put your status at risk unless you plan them around a re-entry permit.
Tax residence changes the entire calculation
This is where people get hurt. A green card makes you a United States tax resident from the first day you hold it, under the green card test set out in the IRS guidance on determining an individual's tax residency status. From that day America taxes your worldwide income, wherever it arises, whether or not you ever bring it into the country. Foreign accounts get reported too. An aggregate balance above $10,000 at any point in the year triggers an FBAR filing with FinCEN, with FATCA reporting sitting on top of it.
New Zealand is gentler at the start and stricter than its reputation later. New tax residents usually qualify as transitional residents, which exempts most foreign sourced income for 48 months. After that, worldwide income becomes taxable, at rates reaching 39 percent above NZD 180,000. The country has no comprehensive capital gains tax, which is the line everyone repeats, yet the foreign investment fund rules tax offshore shareholdings on a deemed return rather than on realized gains, and the bright-line test catches residential property sold inside the statutory window. There is no estate duty, which matters a great deal if the point of the exercise is passing assets to children.
One asymmetry deserves attention before you commit to America. Holding a green card in eight of the last fifteen tax years makes you a long-term resident, and handing that card back can trigger the expatriation tax on unrealized gains. Leaving the United States is expensive. Leaving New Zealand is not.
The long view for your children
Education is the quiet reason most families pick the United States.
Permanent residents pay in-state tuition once they establish residency in a state, which at a flagship public university is often less than half what an international student pays. Green card holders also qualify for federal student aid under the rules explained in the Department of Education guidance for non-US citizens seeking federal financial aid. After graduation they work for any employer without sponsorship, with no H-1B lottery standing in the way. Schools in New Zealand are good and its universities cost far less in absolute terms, against a much smaller job market at the other end.
Watch the ages carefully. A child who turns 21 while the petition sits in a queue can lose derivative status, and the Child Status Protection Act subtracts the time USCIS took to adjudicate the petition without subtracting the years spent waiting for a visa number, which is where nearly all of the wait sits for a backlogged country. Dependency rules in New Zealand are more forgiving on that point.
Pick the country you would live in without the visa
Choose EB-5 if you intend to live and work in the United States and can accept real capital risk at a lower entry price. Worldwide taxation from day one has to be something you can plan around, ideally before you land. New Zealand suits a different profile entirely. You have NZD 5 million to lock away for years, you want a safe base with a light early tax regime, and you have no intention of spending most of the year in any one place. Comparisons with the other main options are collected in EB-5 or Another Country in 2026: Picking the Right Investor Visa.
One warning about closed doors.
Several investor visas that still appear on adviser shortlists no longer accept applications, including the Australian Significant Investor Visa and the Spanish golden visa, so anyone presenting them as live options is working from an old brochure. The Australian case is set out in EB-5 vs Australia's SIV: The Significant Investor Visa Is Closed, and the Spanish one in EB-5 vs Spain Golden Visa: Pros, Cons and Why Spain Closed It. Investment migration rules move faster than most people expect, and New Zealand has itself rebuilt this category more than once.