EB-5 works for retirement and it carries no age limit. A 68 year old can invest $800,000 in a Targeted Employment Area project, file Form I-526E for regional center investors, receive a two year conditional green card and never work a day in the United States. There is no English test, and in a regional center deal the sponsor files the project business plan rather than you. Your employment history is irrelevant. What EB-5 will not do is fund the retirement itself. The $800,000 stays at risk and stays illiquid for years. It should be money you could lose without changing how you live.
Can a retiree actually qualify?
Yes, subject to two constraints that hit older applicants harder than anyone else.
First, the capital must be lawfully sourced and traceable, and retirement wealth is often decades old. A flat bought in 1994 and sold in 2016 leaves a thinner paper trail than a salary earned last year. Banks purge old statements. Land registries reorganize. Start assembling documents before you fall in love with a project, because source of funds is where older files stall.
Second, derivative status covers a spouse and unmarried children under 21. Adult children stay behind. Retirees regularly assume the green card stretches to a 26 year old son, and it does not, so he needs his own petition or a different category entirely. Where bringing grown children is the real goal, read EB-5 for multiple family members before you structure anything.
Why Florida dominates the retiree search
Search demand pairing EB-5 with Florida is no accident. Florida levies no personal income tax and no state estate tax, which changes the arithmetic sharply for someone drawing on a portfolio rather than on a salary. Its homestead exemption removes up to $50,000 of assessed value from most property tax bills, and the Save Our Homes cap limits annual assessment increases on a homestead to 3 percent or the change in the consumer price index, whichever is lower.
Costs run the other way too. Windstorm and flood cover in coastal counties can exceed what a northern buyer pays in property tax for the entire year, and premiums have moved sharply upward. Budget for insurance before assuming Florida is cheap.
One warning specific to Florida. Buying a $900,000 condominium in Miami produces no immigration benefit whatsoever, a point worked through in why buying US real estate alone will not get you a green card. EB-5 capital has to go into a new commercial enterprise that creates ten jobs, and the house you live in creates none.
Healthcare is the question people ask last
Medicare does not arrive with the green card. Lawful permanent residents can enroll at 65 once they have completed five years of continuous US residence, and Part A is premium free only for people with 40 quarters of Medicare covered work, which almost no immigrating retiree has. Buying into Part A is possible and it is expensive. Confirm current premiums and enrollment windows with the Social Security Administration rather than with a project's sales deck.
That leaves a gap nobody puts in the brochure. A couple arriving at 66 faces roughly five years of private coverage before Medicare opens, and private premiums for people in their late sixties are the largest line item most retirement plans miss. Price it with a broker in the county where you will actually live. Rates vary enormously between states.
Your tax position changes the day you are admitted
A green card makes you a US tax resident on worldwide income from the first day of permanent residence, under the rules the IRS sets out on determining an individual's tax residency status. Foreign pensions come into scope. So do rental income at home and gains inside offshore investment wrappers that were tax efficient in your own country. Treaty relief exists for many jurisdictions. It is narrow and it is never automatic.
Reporting obligations arrive alongside residence. Foreign accounts above the aggregate threshold trigger the annual filing described in FinCEN guidance on reporting foreign bank and financial accounts, and FATCA adds a separate form to the income tax return. Penalties are severe even in years when no tax is owed.
Two estate planning points deserve a conversation with a US adviser before you land. The unlimited marital deduction does not apply where the surviving spouse is not a US citizen, which is the reason qualified domestic trusts exist. And a long term resident who later gives up the green card after holding it in eight of the previous fifteen years can trigger the expatriation tax, a mark to market charge on unrealized gains.
Treat the $800,000 as a locked position
Capital must stay at risk through the sustainment period, and repayment cannot be guaranteed by anyone. In practice, money in a regional center deal is tied up for something like five to seven years between the wire and redemption, and redemption itself depends on the project refinancing or selling. Retirees hear a projected 1 percent annual return and quietly treat the principal as safe. Principal is not safe.
Add the costs sitting on top of the headline number. Legal fees, the administrative fee charged by most regional centers, government filing fees and currency conversion together add a substantial sum, itemized in the real cost of EB-5 beyond the investment. If $800,000 plus those costs represents more than a modest slice of net worth, the honest answer is that EB-5 is the wrong instrument for your retirement.
The clock, from wire to unconditional card
Filing starts the queue. Approval leads either to consular processing abroad or to adjustment of status inside the country, and both paths end in conditional permanent residence lasting two years. Form I-829 has to be filed in the 90 days immediately preceding the second anniversary of admission.
Processing times move constantly, and rural set-aside petitions currently receive priority processing by statute. Check live figures against the USCIS case processing times tool instead of trusting a number quoted in a brochure. For someone starting at 70, the arc from first wire to unconditional green card plausibly runs past 75.
Keeping the card once you have it
Green cards lapse through absence, which catches retirees more than any other group. Six months a year back home in Sao Paulo or Seoul invites a hard question at the border, and any single trip beyond twelve months without a reentry permit is presumed to be abandonment. Form I-131 secures a reentry permit valid up to two years, and it must be filed while you are physically present in the United States.
Naturalization demands continuous residence and physical presence across most of the qualifying period. Plenty of EB-5 retirees never naturalize and remain permanent residents indefinitely, which is a legitimate choice. It does leave the estate tax and expatriation questions above unresolved.
Before you wire anything
- Model the health insurance gap. Get written quotes covering the years between arrival and Medicare eligibility at 65.
- Have a US adviser review your home pension. Do it before admission, while restructuring is still possible.
- Confirm who travels with you. Spouse and unmarried children under 21 only, with no exceptions for adult children.
- Stress test the exit. Ask what happens to your capital if the project fails to refinance on schedule.
Whether the whole structure suits your situation is a separate question, worked through in our reality check on whether the EB-5 visa is worth it.