Migration agents are the local sales channel for EB-5 projects in markets where a regional center cannot realistically sell on its own, and the project pays them out of the same offering you put your money into. In China or Vietnam, an agent is often the only practical route to a deal at all, and the same holds across South Korea and much of the Middle East. Since the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, anyone promoting an offering has to register with USCIS on Form I-956K, and the compensation flowing to agents is reported on Form I-956F when the project is filed and again on the annual Form I-956G.
None of that registration means USCIS has vouched for the agent or the project.
Who pays the agent, and how much
You do, indirectly. The commission comes out of the capital stack, either from the developer's budget or from the fee load carried by the offering, and in the largest source markets it has historically run to tens of thousands of dollars per investor. Some agents charge the investor a separate service fee on top of that. Two payments for one introduction. Most investors never hear about the first.
Ask for the number. In writing.
USCIS collects it anyway. Form I-956F, the application for approval of an investment in a commercial enterprise, requires the regional center to describe fees and compensation paid to promoters, and the annual Form I-956G regional center annual statement requires it again. An agent who will not tell you what he earns on your $800,000 has told you something useful anyway.
Form I-956K puts promoters on the record
Form I-956K, the USCIS registration form for EB-5 promoters, was the 2022 statute's answer to a decade of unregulated selling. A promoter registers with USCIS, and a regional center is expected to work only with promoters who have done so. Registration proves that a form was filed. It says nothing about the strength of the developer or the odds that your capital comes back.
The conflict nobody puts on the slide
An agent paid per closed investor has an interest in you closing. That interest is ordinary in any sales relationship. It gets dangerous in EB-5 because the product costs $800,000, the money stays committed for years, and the buyer frequently cannot read the offering documents in the language they were drafted in.
Watch for the tell. An agent tied to a single regional center will present that center's project as the only serious option on the market. Other centers are raising for comparable projects at the same time, and our rundown of the larger regional centers and their track records is a reasonable place to begin a real comparison. If your shortlist has one name on it, you are looking at a sales pitch.
The bundled attorney is the second tell. Agents routinely supply the immigration lawyer, whose fee is folded into the package and whose working relationship is with the agent's network rather than with you. Your interests and the project's interests separate the moment something goes wrong with the project, and that is exactly when you need counsel who answers to you. Hire your own and pay the fee yourself. Our page on what an EB-5 immigration attorney is actually for explains where the line sits.
Claims that should end the meeting
- "The project is approved by USCIS." USCIS approves petitions and, through Form I-956F, particular offerings. It endorses nothing and guarantees nothing. The SEC endorses less than that, and its investor alert on claims that the SEC has approved an offering exists because this pitch is so common.
- "Your capital is guaranteed." A guaranteed buyback converts your investment into a loan and can sink the petition outright, because 8 CFR 204.6 requires the capital to be genuinely at risk.
- "Our approval rate is 100 percent." Nobody controls a USCIS adjudication. Ask instead how many I-526E petitions have been filed for that specific project and how many have been approved.
- "File now, the regional center will submit its I-956F later." Wrong order. The I-956F for your offering must already be on file before your I-526E can rest on it, so ask to see the receipt notice.
USCIS keeps a running list of common immigration scams and how to avoid them, and several of the patterns on it show up in EB-5 sales meetings almost word for word.
Local licensing does not travel
An agent registered at home is regulated for advice about his own country's visas. A MARA registration in Australia says nothing about competence on a United States petition, and no foreign licensing body has any authority over a USCIS filing. Only a licensed US attorney may advise you on your case and sign the Form G-28 that puts a representative on record. The division of labor is simple enough. Your agent introduces and translates. Your attorney signs and carries the professional liability.
Where an agent genuinely earns the money
Good agents do work that would otherwise land on you. Packaging source of funds in a country with currency controls is genuinely difficult, and an agent who has assembled two hundred of those files knows which provincial tax record an officer will ask for before the officer asks. They translate accurately, which is rarer than it sounds. They hold a calendar together across a process that runs for years and several time zones.
That work has real value. It deserves to be paid for openly, at a number you can see, rather than through a commission you never learn about. Our overview of how the EB-5 industry fits together traces where every party's money comes from.
Before you sign anything
Ask the agent for his I-956K registration and the project's I-956F receipt notice. Ask what the project pays him, as a figure. Confirm the regional center still appears on the USCIS approved list, since designation can be terminated. Then take the offering documents to a lawyer who has never met the agent and wait for the answer. Reading how EB-5 projects market themselves worldwide first will tell you what the glossy brochure was engineered to do.