The EB-5 minimum investment is $800,000 when the project sits inside a Targeted Employment Area and $1,050,000 when it does not. Almost every regional center offering on the market is built for the $800,000 tier, because a sponsor asking for an extra $250,000 without a reason will not raise money. Both figures come from the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 and have not moved since.
The statute schedules the first inflation adjustment for 1 January 2027. Anyone planning to file during 2026 should treat today's numbers as a deadline rather than a fixture, because an investor who signs a subscription agreement in November and misses the filing window by three weeks will be looking at a threshold nobody can quote yet.
What makes a project a TEA
TEA stands for Targeted Employment Area. It describes a place, never a discount you negotiate. A project qualifies on one of two grounds, and which one it uses matters more than sponsors usually admit.
Rural. The project lies outside any metropolitan statistical area and outside the outer boundary of a city or town with 20,000 people or more. Boundaries and populations shift slowly, which makes a rural designation the sturdier of the two. The Census Bureau publishes the metropolitan and micropolitan statistical area delineations that settle the first half of that test.
High unemployment. The census tract, or a permitted group of adjoining tracts, shows unemployment of at least 150 percent of the national average. Fragile, this one. Labor market data refreshes, and a tract that qualified when the offering memorandum was drafted can fail by the time your petition reaches an adjudicator. The underlying numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics through the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program.
Ask the sponsor which test the project relies on. Then ask to see the designation and the date the data behind it was pulled. That question separates sponsors who monitor their designation from sponsors who filed once and stopped looking. Our fuller treatment of how TEA designation works walks through the tract grouping rules.
Set-asides: the tier decides your queue
Here is the part investors miss. The Reform and Integrity Act did more than set two price points. It reserved slices of the annual EB-5 visa allocation:
- 20 percent for rural projects
- 10 percent for high unemployment projects
- 2 percent for infrastructure projects
Reserved visas draw from separate pools. That is the whole point of them. For an investor born in a country with a long backlog, mainland China and India above all, the separation has been worth far more than any $250,000 saving on the investment itself. Two investors who wire funds in the same week can end up years apart on a green card depending on which pool their petition sits in. If you were born in a backlogged country, the category is the decision and price is a footnote.
Watch adjudication speed yourself in the USCIS processing times tool rather than accepting a number from a sales deck.
Fees that sit on top of the $800,000
The $800,000 is the investment. Total cost runs higher, and the gap is where most budgets break.
- Regional center administration fee. Paid to the sponsor and not returned with your capital. Amounts differ between sponsors and are rarely published anywhere. Some charge once. Others charge every year the money is out. Get the figure in writing.
- Immigration counsel. Fees vary by firm and by how tangled your source of funds is. Confirm in writing whether the quote runs through the I-829 or stops at the I-526E.
- USCIS filing fees. These change by rule and have risen sharply. Check current amounts on the USCIS filing fee schedule before you build a budget.
- Translation and document preparation. Source of funds records in another language need certified translation. On a complicated fact pattern that bill is no rounding error.
- Consular or adjustment costs. Medical examinations, visa fees and, for families already in the US, an I-485 package for every dependent.
Anyone quoting a single all-in number without breaking out those lines is either simplifying or hiding something. Ask for the breakdown in writing. Investors still weighing whether the total is worth it should read our reality check on risk and return.
The money has to stay at risk
Your whole investment must be genuinely exposed to loss. A guaranteed return, a redemption right on a fixed date or a personal guarantee from the developer can sink the petition however good the project looks on paper. That requirement lives in 8 CFR 204.6 and gets explained at length in Volume 6, Part G of the USCIS Policy Manual.
If an offering promises your capital back on a date certain, treat that promise as a warning rather than a feature. Read what capital at risk means in practice before signing a subscription agreement.
The 2022 Act also set a sustainment period of two years measured from the investment itself, replacing the older rule that tied sustainment to the length of conditional residence. How that two year window gets measured has been worked out through USCIS policy rather than statutory text, so confirm the current reading with counsel before you plan an exit date.
Where the $800,000 has to come from
Lawful source must be proved for the whole amount, and for the fees on top of it. USCIS wants an unbroken chain from the original earnings to the escrow account, and a single missing link can produce a request for evidence that costs months. Investors with documented salary income and a decade of tax returns behind them have the easiest files, while a founder who sold a company through three holding structures in two jurisdictions should expect the source of funds exhibit to run to hundreds of pages. Boring is good here. Read our page on proving your investment money is lawful before deciding which assets to liquidate.
Ten jobs per investor
Each investor's capital must create at least 10 full time jobs for qualifying US workers. Inside a regional center the count can include indirect and induced jobs derived from an economic model, which is the main reason most investors choose that route. In a direct EB-5 investment you count actual employees on your own payroll, a much harder standard to reach with $800,000 in most industries.
The 2027 adjustment and the 2026 deadline
The first inflation adjustment lands on 1 January 2027 and is tied to the consumer price index. Nobody can quote you the resulting figure yet, and anybody who does is guessing. A second date matters more for many families: the regional center program is authorized through 30 September 2027, with grandfathering for petitions filed by 30 September 2026, so a petition filed before that date keeps its adjudication even if the program lapses afterwards.
Filing in 2026 is therefore both cheaper and safer than filing in 2027. Deadline and price push in the same direction, which is rare.
Mistakes that cost people the lower tier
- Assuming TEA status is permanent. High unemployment designations go stale as the data updates.
- Taking a sponsor's word without seeing the designation and the date behind it.
- Committing to a project that turns out to sit outside a TEA, then having to top up by $250,000 in the middle of the process.
- Budgeting the investment alone and meeting the fee stack after signing.
- Confusing the set-aside category with the price tier. Rural gets you both a lower threshold and a reserved visa; a high unemployment urban project gets you a smaller reservation.
All of those are avoidable with two questions and a written answer. Worth reading alongside this: the myths that lead to USCIS denials.
So how much do you actually need?
Plan on $800,000 of capital you can afford to lose, plus a fee stack that a careful investor budgets separately and conservatively. Add the cost of the two years your money sits sustained, because it earns you little while it works for someone else. Anyone for whom the $800,000 represents most of their net worth should think hard, since the capital at risk requirement means exactly what it says and no lawyer, sponsor or escrow agent can soften it for you. Do not stretch.