Two obligations run through the EB-5 conditional period. Your capital must stay invested and at risk for a sustainment period of at least two years, measured from the date the full amount was made available to the new commercial enterprise, and the ten jobs attributable to you must be created and documented. Everything else written about the conditional green card sits downstream of those two rules.
Break either one and the Form I-829 petition to remove conditions fails, taking the green cards of your spouse and children with it.
The sustainment clock moved in 2022
Older guidance tied sustainment to the period of conditional residence, which in practice meant capital stayed at risk until the I-829 was filed, sometimes six or seven years after the wire left your bank. The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 replaced that with a fixed term: the investment must be sustained for at least two years from the date the required amount was invested. USCIS confirmed the reading in its policy guidance. An investor whose $800,000 reached the enterprise in 2023 may therefore have completed sustainment before conditional residence even began.
Confirm which version applies to you. Petitions filed before 15 March 2022, the date the reform act was signed, sit under the earlier framework. Read USCIS Policy Manual Volume 6, Part G on immigrant investors alongside your own counsel instead of taking a promoter's summary of it.
What "at risk" forbids
The definition of investing in 8 CFR 204.6, the EB-5 eligibility regulation excludes any arrangement in which the enterprise gives the investor a note or a redemption right, and it excludes capital secured by the assets of the enterprise. Three consequences follow.
No guaranteed return may appear anywhere in your documents, including a side letter nobody intended to show an officer. No repayment date may be promised inside the sustainment window. Collateral over project assets granted in your favor converts the deal into a secured loan, and a secured loan will not support an EB-5 petition.
Escrow deserves separate attention. Money parked in escrow has not been deployed into the business, so the clock does not start while it sits there.
Profits you may take, capital you may not
Distributions of genuine profit are permitted. If the enterprise earns money and pays out a 3 percent preferred return from those earnings, the payment does not reduce your capital contribution and does not breach sustainment. A distribution that dips into the original $800,000 does breach it. The test is whether the cash came from earnings or from your capital account, and the classification your accountant puts on the Schedule K-1 is the first thing an adjudicator will examine.
Keep those records at audit standard from month one.
When the project repays you early
In a loan model the enterprise lends your capital to a job creating entity, and that entity may repay before your immigration case finishes. The old framework triggered redeployment, meaning the enterprise had to put the money back to work at risk in further commercial activity or the petition suffered. With sustainment now fixed at two years from investment, the question narrows considerably. If your two years closed before repayment arrived, returned capital does not automatically break the case, although the job creation evidence still has to stand on its own.
Do not assume, though. Redeployment policy has shifted more than once, fund documents usually give the manager wide discretion over where money goes next, and a redeployment into something far outside the original business raises questions of its own. Ask your manager in writing what the plan is. Keep the reply.
Jobs are the part you cannot repair at the end
Ten full-time positions per investor, at 35 hours a week or more, held by workers authorized to work permanently in the United States. Direct investors count employees on the payroll of the enterprise itself. Regional center investors count indirect and induced jobs produced by an economic model, where construction spending can generate credit that no payroll register shows.
Track the number quarterly rather than annually. A project running 40 percent behind its hiring plan in year one is a problem you can still act on, while the same gap discovered ninety days before your filing deadline is simply a lost case. Our guide to proving job creation and sustained investment at I-829 lists the documents that persuade an officer.
A monitoring routine that produces evidence
- Quarterly. A written project update with headcount against plan, plus confirmation that your capital remains deployed in the business.
- Annually. Reviewed or audited financial statements and your Schedule K-1. Regional center investors should also ask for the information the sponsor reported on Form I-956G, the regional center annual statement.
- On any change. Get the amendment in writing. A change of manager or a revised construction schedule belongs in your own file as well as the sponsor's.
- Never. Never sign a document promising repayment on a date inside the sustainment period, however it is labeled.
Your green card can fail while the project succeeds
Conditional residents lose status by abandoning it, and long absences are the usual cause. Trips beyond six months invite questions at the border. An absence beyond one year is treated as abandonment unless you obtained a reentry permit by filing Form I-131 for travel documents before departing. Review the USCIS explanation of conditional permanent residence and its two year term, and file a change of address within 10 days of every move. Tax residency begins with the card: worldwide income becomes reportable, and an FBAR falls due once your foreign accounts together exceed $10,000 at any point in the year.
Investors who expect to spend most of the two years abroad should read our pages on traveling abroad on a conditional green card and on reentry permits for investors who must stay overseas before booking anything long.
If the regional center is terminated
Termination of a sponsor no longer kills an investor's case automatically. The 2022 statute created protections for investors who acted in good faith, under which USCIS notifies the affected investor, who then has a window of 180 days to take a corrective step such as associating the project with another regional center. These provisions remain new. Few cases have run through them end to end, and the outcome in any specific situation is harder to predict than a confident summary suggests.
Filing at the right moment
The I-829 belongs in the 90 days before the second anniversary of your admission as a conditional resident. Not earlier. The deadline sits in 8 CFR 216.6, the regulation on removing EB-5 conditions, and missing it terminates status, after which the case lands in front of an immigration judge. Your receipt notice extends conditional status while the petition is pending, and notices issued in recent years have carried a 48 month extension. Read the length printed on your own notice rather than trusting a number from a forum.
One piece of good news to end on. Once you hold conditional residence, a change to the business plan is generally survivable in a way it would not have been at the petition stage, because USCIS assesses the I-829 on what actually happened to the money and the jobs.