Ask any EB-5 regional center for two documents before you discuss anything else: the Form I-956F filing for this specific project and the sources and uses table showing where EB-5 money sits in the capital stack. Then ask one number, the jobs per investor projected in the economic report. Those three items answer most of what matters about an $800,000 commitment, and if any of them takes more than a day to produce you have already learned something useful. The list below covers the rest, sorted by who is actually able to answer it.
Questions only the regional center can answer
Track record and repayments
- How many projects has this center sponsored, and how many have repaid EB-5 investors in full?
- How many I-829 petitions from your sponsored projects have been approved, and how many denied?
- Has any project you sponsored missed its job projection? Which one, and by how much?
- Were the principals operating before the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, and did they re-file under the new designation rules?
A center that has never returned capital cannot show you a repayment. New sponsors are not automatically bad. What you want most is a sponsor willing to name a project that underperformed and describe in detail what happened to the investors in it afterwards, because a firm that volunteers its worst outcome is a firm that expects you to go and check, while a firm with nothing but success stories is either extraordinarily lucky or editing.
Ask about compliance history too. Audits are now routine, and our page on regional center audits and post 2022 compliance explains what USCIS looks at when it visits.
Compliance under the post 2022 rules
- Show me the receipt for the project's I-956F. An I-526E cannot be approved on a project that has no I-956F on file.
- What did the most recent Form I-956G annual statement disclose about fees and capital deployment to date?
- Who signed Form I-956H on the bona fides of persons involved, and has anyone connected to the center been barred from the program?
- Is the agent who introduced me registered on Form I-956K, and what commission are they receiving out of my money?
Promoter registration and the annual statement exist precisely because the pre 2022 program had neither. Use them.
Ask the developer, not the sales desk
Where does EB-5 sit in the capital stack?
This single question decides whether you get your money back. Ask for the sources and uses table in writing. Ask what the senior lender's loan to cost ratio is. Ask how much genuine cash equity the developer has contributed, and whether that equity is real cash or land contributed at an appraised value the developer chose. A sponsor whose principals have put twenty or thirty percent of total project cost in as their own money behaves very differently in a downturn from one whose entire exposure is a parcel it already owned, marked up by a friendly appraiser and pledged into the deal as equity.
- Is EB-5 senior debt, mezzanine debt or preferred equity? Use the legal term, not the brochure phrase.
- What secures the EB-5 loan? A first mortgage? A second position behind the bank? A pledge of membership interests that would be worth nothing in a bankruptcy?
- On a sale or refinancing, who gets paid first, and where in that queue do EB-5 investors stand?
- What percentage of total project cost is EB-5? If EB-5 is 40 percent of a project whose senior loan has not closed, the project is not financed yet.
Measure the cushion above the 10 job floor
Ten jobs per investor is the floor. Ask what the economic report projects. A report showing 13 or 14 jobs per investor carries a 30 to 40 percent cushion against cost overruns and reduced spending, while a report showing 10.2 carries none at all. Get the number in writing.
- Which model produced the numbers, RIMS II or IMPLAN? Name the economist who signed the report.
- How much of the job count comes from construction, and does the construction period run 24 months or longer? Construction lasting under two years counts only through expenditure based indirect jobs.
- What share of projected jobs depends on tenant or operating revenue rather than hard construction spending?
- Does the project qualify for a set-aside, and which one? Rural takes 20 percent of annual visas, high unemployment 10 percent, infrastructure 2 percent.
When does the money come back?
- What is the stated loan term, and how many extension options does the borrower hold unilaterally?
- What events trigger repayment, and may the developer repay early?
- If capital returns before my I-829 is approved, what are the redeployment terms and who chooses the new investment?
- Do investors vote on redeployment, or does the manager decide alone?
Redeployment deserves a conversation of its own. An investor whose project repays in year four but whose I-829 has not been adjudicated will see that capital moved into a second investment chosen by a manager, on terms set out somewhere in an operating agreement drafted years earlier by lawyers the manager hired, and the practical effect can be another three or four years before anyone sees a dollar. Read the governing documents yourself, with help from our guide to reading an EB-5 offering memorandum, before you sign a subscription agreement.
Fees: get the whole number in writing
The $800,000 is not the price. Ask for one written figure that covers the administrative fee, escrow costs, legal fees and government filing fees, which are published on the USCIS filing fee schedule. Then ask who receives each component.
- Is the administrative fee refundable if the project never launches or the offering is withdrawn?
- How much of that fee is paid onward to the migration agent who introduced you?
- Are there annual management or monitoring fees during the hold period, and do they reduce investor returns?
- Who pays for a Request for Evidence caused by project documents rather than by my own file?
Which answers should end the meeting
Some responses are disqualifying on their own.
- "Your green card is guaranteed." No private party can guarantee an immigration outcome.
- "Your capital is guaranteed." A buyback or redemption arrangement conflicts with the at risk requirement in 8 CFR 204.6 and can sink the petition it was meant to protect.
- "The government has approved this offering." No US agency approves securities offerings, and the SEC publishes an investor alert about claims that it approved an offering for exactly this reason.
- "The economic report is confidential." You are being asked for $800,000 on the strength of a document you may not read.
- "Only two units left, decide this week." Manufactured urgency is a sales technique, not a fact about the deal.
Reluctance is data. Record it and move on to the next sponsor.
Running the process properly
Send the questions in writing and keep every answer. A verbal assurance from a salesperson carries no legal weight, and the subscription agreement almost certainly states that the offering documents supersede everything you were told in a meeting. Where an answer contradicts the private placement memorandum, the memorandum governs.
Bring your own advisers. An immigration lawyer reads the immigration risk. Somebody independent reads the deal, either a securities lawyer or an analyst you pay directly. Our beginner checklist on EB-5 due diligence sets out the documents to demand, the companion page on red flags before you wire $800,000 covers the patterns that precede losses, and what an EB-5 regional center actually does explains why the sponsor matters as much as the building.
Every question here has a right answer that a competent sponsor gives without flinching.