A US green card through EB-5 and a Portuguese Golden Visa cost roughly the same and solve opposite problems. EB-5 asks $800,000 in a Targeted Employment Area or $1,050,000 outside one, and it hands conditional permanent residence to the investor along with a spouse and unmarried children under 21. Portugal's route starts at EUR 500,000 in a regulated fund and asks for about seven days a year on Portuguese soil. One buys a country to live in. The other buys mobility, plus a clock running toward an EU passport.
Decide by which obligations you want. Price is the smaller half.
What each one really costs
EB-5 thresholds are statutory and have not moved since the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 was signed. Rural projects and projects in areas of high unemployment sit at $800,000. Qualifying infrastructure projects sit there too. Everything else costs $1,050,000. Both figures take their first inflation adjustment on 1 January 2027, the strongest argument against drifting through 2026.
Then come the numbers nobody prints in the headline. A regional center charges an administrative fee on top of the investment, commonly a five figure sum that never comes back. Immigration counsel bills separately. Government filing fees for Form I-526E and later Form I-829 move by rulemaking, so budget them at the rate published the day you file.
Portugal deleted the residential property route in 2023, which had been the reason most applicants looked at the country at all. That door is shut. What survives is dominated by a EUR 500,000 subscription into a regulated Portuguese fund. A EUR 250,000 donation supporting cultural heritage is the cheaper door. Government charges apply per family member, so a couple with two children pays a multiple of a single applicant's bill.
How much of your year each program claims
Portugal wants seven days in the first year and fourteen days in each following two year period, roughly 35 days across five years. You can keep running a business in Mumbai and still hold the permit.
A green card is a different animal. Immigration officers treat it as evidence that America is your home, and an absence beyond twelve months generally abandons the status unless you hold a reentry permit on Form I-131, good for up to two years. USCIS lays out the mechanics on its page about travel documents for permanent residents. Repeated five month absences draw questions at the port of entry long before any single trip crosses that line.
Your first two years are conditional. In the 90 day window before the second anniversary of gaining conditional residence you file Form I-829, and approval removes the conditions as of that second anniversary. Derivative family members are included on the principal investor's I-829. They do not each file one.
Worldwide tax starts the day the green card does
From the day you are admitted as a permanent resident, the United States taxes your worldwide income. Rent from the flat in Lisbon and gains on a portfolio you never brought onshore both belong on a US return. The IRS sets out the threshold question in its guidance on determining an individual's tax residency status.
Reporting rides along with it. Foreign accounts crossing $10,000 in aggregate at any moment during the year trigger an FBAR filed with FinCEN, and FATCA layers its own disclosure over the top.
A Golden Visa holder spending 35 days in Portugal across five years is normally not a Portuguese tax resident, because residence there turns on 183 days or a habitual home. Portugal also closed its old non-habitual resident regime to new arrivals, with transitional treatment for those already in the pipeline. Any article about it written in 2019 is a museum piece.
One more asymmetry deserves a sentence. Hand back a green card after holding it in eight of the last fifteen tax years and the US expatriation rules apply to you, whereas walking away from Portuguese residency costs nothing beyond paperwork.
Jobs: mandatory for EB-5, optional in Portugal
EB-5 lives or dies on ten full time jobs for qualifying US workers per investor. Portugal asks nothing comparable. Regional center investors count indirect and induced positions from an economic model, which is why most use one; direct investors count payroll. 8 CFR 204.6 defines full time as at least 35 hours a week and refuses to let you add part time positions together to reach that bar, though a genuine job sharing arrangement in which two employees share one full time position does count.
Portugal keeps a job creation route requiring ten hires, and almost nobody uses it. Fund subscription is easier to document and far easier to exit. That gap tells you what each government wants: the United States buys employment, Portugal buys capital in regulated vehicles.
Counting to a passport
Five years as a permanent resident opens naturalization on Form N-400, and the two conditional years count toward that total. You must also hold continuous residence and be physically present in the country for at least half of that five year period. English and civics testing follows. A permanent resident who never naturalizes keeps the card indefinitely and renews it on Form I-90 every ten years.
Portugal's historic threshold has been five years of legal residence plus an A2 language exam, and lawmakers there have argued about stretching it. Verify the rule in force on the day you file. A Portuguese passport carries the right to live and work in any EU member state, which is the single benefit no American document replicates. Where an EU passport is the real objective, weigh our comparisons of the Greek golden visa and Spain's now closed program first.
Deadlines that bind only the American side
Two dates govern the American calendar. Regional center authorization currently runs to 30 September 2027. Separately, 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S) grandfathers petitions filed on or before 30 September 2026, so an investor inside that date keeps a petition eligible for adjudication even if authorization later lapses. The allocation and set-aside language sits at 8 U.S.C. 1153 on the House US Code site.
Filing mechanics matter more than marketing decks admit. A regional center must have filed Form I-956F for your specific offering before you can file Form I-526E; USCIS has to approve that I-956F before your petition can be approved, but sitting on your hands until the approval lands simply costs you a priority date. Set-asides then reserve 20 percent of annual EB-5 visas for rural projects and 10 percent for areas of high unemployment, with a further 2 percent for infrastructure. Those reserved lanes are how applicants from backlogged countries move ahead of the general queue.
Which family should pick which
Portugal fits a family whose center of gravity is staying put. You keep the business at home and you want Schengen access with a European fallback. Nobody is moving children into an American school system. Entry cost is lower and the exit is clean, which is worth a great deal to a family that wants optionality in Europe without rewriting where it pays tax and where the grandparents live.
EB-5 fits a family that intends to live and work in the United States without an employer controlling the paperwork. A green card lets a child qualify for resident tuition where state rules allow it and take a job after graduation without sponsorship. That calculation is what most European investors who choose the US over an EU golden visa describe. Weigh it against the fact that the $800,000 sits illiquid inside a construction project for something like six years while the jobs get built and counted, an exposure a fund subscription redeemable on a stated term does not carry in the same way.
Holding both is lawful and more common than people assume, though it doubles your reporting. For a wider survey, start with our overview of global investor visa options.