An EB-5 immigrant visa is normally valid for up to six months from the day the consulate issues it, and that window can be shorter if your medical examination expires first. You have to be admitted to the United States before the date printed on the visa. Permanent residence begins the moment a CBP officer admits you, and that admission date, rather than your petition approval date, starts the two year conditional period that ends with Form I-829.
Miss the date and there is no extension. Nobody grants exceptions. You reapply through the consulate and pay the fees a second time, and the medical usually has to be redone.
Reading the expiration date on your visa
Look at the visa foil in your passport. Check both dates the day you collect it. The gap between issuance and expiry is customarily six months, though a consular officer will not issue a visa valid beyond the validity of your medical examination. Applicants who completed the medical well before their interview sometimes discover the travel window is noticeably tighter than they had assumed, which becomes a real problem when you are selling a house, pulling children out of school and winding down a business in the same quarter.
Every family member holds a separate visa with its own dates. A spouse examined on a different day can easily end up with a different expiration date. Derivatives may travel with the principal investor or follow later, and they cannot be admitted ahead of the principal.
Timing the medical badly is one of the quietest ways to lose weeks. The EB-5 medical exam and vaccination requirements set out how the appointment fits into the consular sequence.
The port of entry, step by step
Present your passport and immigrant visa to the CBP officer at primary inspection. That part is quick. Hand over the consulate's sealed packet unopened if you were given one. Immigrant visa holders are routinely referred to secondary inspection, which sounds alarming and is ordinary procedure. Fingerprints are taken and the file is checked. The officer then endorses your passport with an admission stamp, and that stamp serves as temporary evidence of permanent residence until the card arrives.
Pay the USCIS immigrant fee online before you fly. Not paying will not stop your entry, but the card is not produced until the payment posts, and the current amount is listed on the USCIS fee schedule.
The class of admission printed on your visa is an employment creation code. It is not CR1. CR1 belongs to the conditional spouse of a US citizen and appears on EB-5 pages far more often than it should.
Your physical green card is mailed to the US address you gave on the DS-260, usually within a few weeks of arrival. Give an address where mail is reliably collected by somebody you trust.
What can still go wrong at the border
Admission is not automatic. A CBP officer can refer you for further questioning when something in the record changed after your interview, and the usual triggers are an arrest, a divorce, a new marriage, or a child who turned 21 between visa issuance and travel. Tell your attorney before you fly. Families whose children are close to the age limit should read how the Child Status Protection Act works in EB-5, since CSPA subtracts petition adjudication time from a child's age and does not subtract the years spent waiting for a visa number.
Adjustment of status, if you are already here
Applicants lawfully present in the US in a valid nonimmigrant status can file Form I-485 to adjust status instead of traveling abroad for an interview. When a visa number is available in the relevant category, an EB-5 investor may file the I-485 concurrently with the I-526E, and the pending I-485 supports an employment authorization document on Form I-765 plus advance parole on Form I-131. Two of our pages cover this ground: filing Form I-485 without leaving the country and work and travel authorization while the I-485 is pending.
No port of entry moment exists on that path. Conditional residence starts on the date USCIS approves the I-485.
Which route applies turns on where you are living and what status you currently hold. USCIS describes both, in its overview of consular processing and its overview of adjustment of status. Applicants outside the country have only the first of those.
The two year clock, and what ends it
Conditional residence runs exactly two years from the date of admission, or from I-485 approval. Form I-829, the petition to remove conditions, is filed during the 90 days immediately before the second anniversary. Diary that window now. File late without good cause and the status terminates.
Derivatives are included on the principal investor's I-829. They do not each file their own petition, and that detail trips up families every year.
When USCIS approves the I-829, conditions come off as of the second anniversary of the date you obtained conditional residence. The removal does not reach back to the start of the two years.
While the petition sits pending, USCIS issues extension notices that keep your status valid past the expiration printed on the conditional card. Carry that notice with the card whenever you travel. The agency explains the framework on its page about conditional permanent residence.
Your first month as a resident
- Apply for a Social Security number if you did not request one on the DS-260. The Social Security Administration's number and card page lists the documents to bring.
- You are a US tax resident from the first day of permanent residence, and worldwide income becomes reportable from that day. The IRS explains the green card test on its page for determining an individual's tax residency status.
- Foreign financial accounts above the reporting threshold require an annual FBAR filed with FinCEN.
- Get a state driver license or identity card. Most states accept the admission stamp before the physical card arrives.
- Report any change of address to USCIS within 10 days of moving.
Do not lose what you just activated
Residence is usually lost through absence rather than through anything dramatic. Trips beyond six months invite hard questions on return. Past one year, residence is presumed abandoned unless you obtained a reentry permit by filing Form I-131 before departing, and reentry permits for EB-5 investors covers the filing sequence. USCIS states the ground rules in its guidance on international travel as a permanent resident.
Naturalization becomes possible five years after permanent residence began, on Form N-400, and the two conditional years count toward that total. A green card is renewed on Form I-90 every ten years. What a permanent resident never renews is a work permit, because the card itself is the work authorization.
Arrival is where the residency starts. Plenty of process still follows, and what happens after you land in the US picks the story up from arrivals.