Since the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, a Regional Center keeps its designation only by proving compliance year after year. USCIS must audit every designated center at least once every five years. The annual statement, Form I-956G, comes due each fiscal year, and an Integrity Fund fee rides with it: $20,000 for most centers, $10,000 for a center that had 20 or fewer investors in the preceding fiscal year. Every offering also needs its own Form I-956F on file before an investor can file Form I-526E against that project. When a center lets any of this slip, USCIS issues a notice of intent to terminate, and a termination puts every investor behind that center on a 180 day clock to move the money or lose the case.
So read the compliance file before you read the brochure.
What the 2022 law bolted onto the program
The old regime asked a Regional Center for one annual form and not much else. Congress replaced it. The RIA arrived inside Public Law 117-103, and the full text of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 on GovInfo carries the EB-5 provisions. Every center already in the program had to file Form I-956 to keep operating under the new rules. The obligations that came with that filing are what you are buying into when you wire money.
- Form I-956 for designation, with the geographic area covered and a written policy for monitoring the projects the center sponsors.
- Form I-956F for each individual offering. USCIS has to approve it before any I-526E tied to that project can be approved.
- Form I-956H, a bona fides declaration covering everyone involved in running the center. A fraud conviction or a securities bar disqualifies a person from involvement.
- Form I-956K registration for every direct or third party promoter marketing the offering, plus written disclosure to investors of what that promoter is paid.
- Form I-956G annual statement, covering capital raised, capital deployed, jobs created and money paid to agents.
- Integrity Fund money: the annual center fee, plus $1,000 collected from each investor petition.
Open the USCIS page for Form I-956F and note the sequencing, because promoters get this wrong constantly. You may file your I-526E as soon as the center has filed the I-956F for your specific offering. Approval of that I-956F is required before your petition can be approved, not before it can be lodged. Waiting for approval before you file surrenders months of priority date for no benefit at all.
Form I-956G is where the story falls apart
The annual statement tells you whether a center is running a business or running a pitch deck. It reports, project by project, how much investor capital came in, how much left the new commercial enterprise for the job creating entity, how many jobs the economic model credits so far and what the center paid to agents. Compare two consecutive years side by side. If the job count has not moved while construction is supposedly under way, ask why in writing and keep the answer.
A center that misses the filing or the fee can be terminated for that alone.
How the five year audit actually runs
Auditors review the center's records, verify what was claimed in the I-956F and I-956G filings and may show up at the site. Refusing consent is fatal. The statute directs USCIS to terminate a center that will not permit an audit or a site visit, so there is no polite way to decline one. Findings short of termination still travel: they feed the next round of requests for evidence on investor petitions tied to that center, which is how a sponsor's paperwork problem becomes your RFE.
The supervisory framework sits in Volume 6, Part G of the USCIS Policy Manual, while the job creation definitions that auditors measure against still live in 8 CFR 204.6 on eCFR. Read subsection (e) once, slowly. It defines a full time position as at least 35 hours a week and excludes combinations of part time positions even where the hours add up, although a genuine job sharing arrangement between two or more employees does count as one qualifying position.
Fund administration and where your money sleeps
Each new commercial enterprise has to retain an independent fund administrator, unless it produces annual audited financial statements prepared under US generally accepted accounting principles and files them with USCIS. That role is unglamorous and load bearing. Somebody outside the sponsor's control has eyes on money leaving the account.
Ask which of the two routes this enterprise chose. Ask for the administrator's engagement letter and the most recent audited statement. A sponsor who treats that as an impertinent question has already answered it.
Who is allowed to sell you the deal
Promoter registration on Form I-956K was the RIA's answer to years of undisclosed commissions paid out of investor capital. Migration agents and referral partners have to register, and the center must disclose the compensation arrangement to you in writing. When an agent in your home country cannot produce a registration, the arrangement sits outside the statute, and the offering paying that agent carries a defect you did not create and cannot fix. The SEC's investor alert on offerings that falsely claim SEC approval deserves five minutes of your time, because that exact lie surfaces in EB-5 marketing every year.
Termination is survivable if you move within 180 days
Losing a center is not the end of a case. Under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(M), headed Treatment of good faith investors following program noncompliance, an investor whose Regional Center is terminated or debarred receives notice and 180 days to take corrective action, which normally means associating the investment with another approved center or making a qualifying investment in another enterprise. Priority dates generally survive that move. People confuse this paragraph with the grandfathering rule, and they are separate provisions doing separate jobs.
Ask for the paperwork before you wire
Five documents, requested in a single email, separate a serious sponsor from a fragile one: the I-956 designation approval notice, the I-956F receipt notice for your exact offering, the last two I-956G filings, the fund administrator's engagement letter and the I-956K registration of whoever is selling to you. Our page on questions to ask a Regional Center or developer before investing pushes further into project level diligence. For the structure itself, start with how a Regional Center investment works and what it costs, then read our overview of the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 for statutory background.
Which dates belong in your calendar
Regional Center authorization runs through 30 September 2027. Petitions filed on or before 30 September 2026 are protected by 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S), titled Protection from expired legislation, which keeps them adjudicable even if authorization lapses afterwards. The first inflation adjustment to the investment thresholds arrives on 1 January 2027, lifting both the $800,000 TEA figure and the $1,050,000 standard figure. Compliance quality matters most inside this window, because a program lapse combined with a thinly capitalized sponsor is how investors end up litigating instead of immigrating. Our entry on what happens if EB-5 program rules change mid process works through the grandfathering mechanics.