The EB-5 minimum investment is $800,000 in a Targeted Employment Area and $1,050,000 anywhere else. Congress set both figures in the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, wrote them into statute rather than regulation, and attached an inflation adjustment mechanism whose first adjustment falls due on 1 January 2027. So the honest answer to the debate is this: $800,000 is almost certainly below what a market clearing price would be, given how many people are queuing for a limited number of visas, and it is scheduled to rise rather than fall. For an individual investor, though, the size of the check is the least interesting risk in the deal. The bigger question is whether the project behind it gives the money back.
Where the $800,000 figure came from
Congress created EB-5 in 1990 with a standard investment of $1,000,000 and a reduced amount of $500,000 for a Targeted Employment Area. Those numbers then sat untouched for roughly three decades while the dollar lost a great deal of purchasing power. In 2019 the Department of Homeland Security finally raised them by regulation, to $900,000 and $1,800,000, and tightened the rules on how a TEA could be drawn. A federal court set that rule aside in 2021 on procedural grounds and the amounts snapped back to $500,000, which produced an odd window in which the price fell overnight. The full sequence, including why the reversal happened, is covered in EB-5 Modernization: Rule Changes, Lawsuits and the Court Reversal.
The 2022 statute ended that instability. It fixed the amounts at $800,000 and $1,050,000, took TEA designation authority away from individual states and gave it to DHS, and created the set-asides that reserve 20 percent of annual visas for rural projects, 10 percent for high unemployment areas and 2 percent for infrastructure. The statutory language sits in 8 U.S.C. 1153, the employment based preference statute, and the act itself is published as Public Law 117-103 on GovInfo. What that shift means for the people who invested on either side of the line is set out in EB-5 Investment Thresholds 2022: From $500K to $800K.
The case that $800,000 is too low
Three arguments carry weight, and none of them are new.
- Inflation has eaten the original bargain. The 1990 standard amount, restated in today's money, would be considerably more than the current $1,050,000. Measured against what Congress originally asked of investors, today's price is a discount.
- Demand exceeds supply. When a price sits below the market clearing level, the shortage shows up as a queue rather than as unfilled capacity. That is exactly what the EB-5 backlog for high demand countries looks like. Raising the price would ration by capital instead of by waiting time, which some economists consider the fairer of two bad options.
- The discount is claimed too easily. Critics argue the reduced amount was meant for genuinely distressed areas, and that for years it was routinely claimed by projects in prosperous city centers. The 2022 reforms narrowed that, but the objection has not disappeared. It sits at the heart of the broader critique summarized in EB-5 Under Fire in 2026: Critics, Scandals and What Still Works.
The case that $800,000 is already high enough
The counter arguments are less often heard and just as serious.
- $800,000 is not the real cost. Add the regional center administrative fee, immigration counsel, securities counsel, translation, government filing fees and travel, and the true outlay is meaningfully higher. Then add the cost that never appears on an invoice: your capital is illiquid and genuinely at risk for years, with no guaranteed return, and often no return at all beyond a token rate.
- It is a tax on the middle of the market. Every increase prices out professionals and business owners of moderate means and pushes the program further toward the very wealthy, which is not what the 1990 legislation was aiming at. That original intent is worth reading, and it is set out in Why Congress Created EB-5: Original 1990 Goals and What They Mean.
- Other countries compete on price. Residency by investment is a global market. Push the American number too high and capital simply goes elsewhere, taking the jobs with it.
What happens on 1 January 2027
The statute does not leave the amounts frozen. It requires periodic adjustment for inflation, with the first adjustment due on 1 January 2027 and further adjustments at set intervals afterwards. Both the Targeted Employment Area figure and the standard figure move together. Nobody can responsibly tell you the exact new number today, because it depends on published inflation data and on how DHS implements the adjustment. What you can do is watch the official record rather than the newsletters: proposed and final rules appear in the Federal Register search results for EB-5, and the operative regulations sit in 8 CFR 204.6, the employment creation regulation.
Treat any adviser who quotes a precise 2027 figure with suspicion. The direction of travel is knowable. The magnitude is not, yet.
The three dates that matter more than the price
- 30 September 2026. Petitions filed by this date carry grandfathering protection: they continue to be processed even if the regional center program is not reauthorized.
- 1 January 2027. The first statutory inflation adjustment to both investment amounts.
- 30 September 2027. The current authorization of the regional center program runs to this date. Whether it becomes permanent is an open political question, examined in Will EB-5 Become Permanent? 2026 Debate on the Program's Future.
Here is the uncomfortable part. Those dates are real, and they are also the favorite instrument of every aggressive salesperson in this industry. A deadline is a reason to start your due diligence early. It is never a reason to skip it. An investor who rushes into a weak project to save a future price increase has traded a manageable cost for an unmanageable risk.
Which amount applies to your case
You qualify for $800,000 only if the new commercial enterprise is principally doing business in a Targeted Employment Area, meaning a rural area or an area of high unemployment, or if the project falls into the infrastructure category. Otherwise the figure is $1,050,000. The set-asides matter here in a way the price alone does not: rural and high unemployment projects draw on reserved visa numbers, which for investors from heavily backlogged countries can be worth far more than the difference in the check. Rural petitions also receive priority in processing under the statute. If the infrastructure route is unfamiliar, see EB-5 Infrastructure Projects 2026: How the New Category Works and Who It Suits. Program mechanics are summarized by the government on the USCIS EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program page.
Does the amount lock in when you file?
Yes. The qualifying amount is the one in effect when the investment is made and the petition is properly filed. That is why an increase creates a rush and why the rush is dangerous. Locking in a lower amount is only a saving if the underlying project survives to repay you. If it does not, you have saved a few hundred thousand dollars of threshold and lost $800,000 of principal. The reforms that make projects easier to evaluate, including audits, fund administration and the integrity fund, are described in EB-5 Integrity Rules 2022: How New Audits and Reporting Protect Investors in 2026.
So: too late, too low, or just right?
As policy, $800,000 is too low in the narrow economic sense that it does not clear the market, which is why the country queues keep growing instead of the capital drying up. As a personal decision, it is neither late nor early. It is a price that is currently stable, backed by a statute with an integrity framework that did not exist before 2022, and scheduled to move upward rather than downward. If you have a project you genuinely trust and lawful, well documented capital, waiting for a better price is a bet you are unlikely to win. If you do not have those things, no threshold makes the investment sensible.