Your EB-5 green card is conditional for two years, and the conditions attach to the investment rather than to your rights as a resident. You may live anywhere in the country, work for any employer or for none, buy property and travel. What you cannot do is let the two years run out without filing Form I-829 to show the capital stayed at risk and the ten jobs appeared. The two year period begins on the day a Customs and Border Protection officer admits you at a port of entry, or the day USCIS approves your Form I-485.
What the two year condition actually restricts
Very little, day to day. A conditional permanent resident holds the same Form I-551 card as everyone else, printed with a two year expiry instead of ten. The card is your work authorization, so no separate permit is needed and nothing about employment has to be renewed. USCIS describes the status on its page for conditional permanent residence, and the removal rules sit at 8 CFR 216.6.
Family comes along. A spouse and unmarried children under 21 who were included in the petition receive their own conditional cards. When the time comes, each of them is listed on the principal investor's I-829 rather than filing a petition of their own.
Your first month as a resident
Pay the USCIS immigrant fee if you entered on an immigrant visa. Until it is paid, USCIS does not produce the physical card, and people who skip it spend half a year wondering where the mail went. Meanwhile the admission stamp in your passport works as temporary evidence of permanent residence, normally for a year, which is long enough to open a bank account and start a job without the plastic in hand.
Get a Social Security number next. If you requested one on the DS-260 or on the I-485, the card arrives on its own within a few weeks. If you did not, apply through the Social Security Administration and bring your passport with the admission stamp in it.
Then the ordinary machinery. A state driver's license or ID card. A bank account, and a first credit card that starts the credit history you do not yet have, because the capital you just wired into an American project leaves no trace in a US credit file. Children heading into school will find that residency changes tuition classification and, over time, eligibility under the federal student aid rules for non citizens.
Travel rules that catch new residents out
You can leave and come back. The risk is a long absence being read as abandonment of residence. Trips under six months rarely draw a question. Keep the boarding passes anyway. Between six months and a year, an inspector may ask what you were doing and why. Past a year the card stops working as a re-entry document and the presumption runs against you, which is exactly what Form I-131 exists to prevent, since a reentry permit filed while you are physically in the United States can hold the door open for up to two years. USCIS covers the basics under international travel as a permanent resident, and our page on reentry permits for EB-5 investors works through the timing.
Investors who intend to keep running a business abroad through the conditional period should design that plan before they land.
Taxes start the day you are admitted
US permanent residents are taxed on worldwide income. From the day of admission you are a resident for tax purposes under the green card test, which applies whether or not the substantial presence test would have caught you anyway. Foreign accounts matter too. Where your non US accounts together top $10,000 at any point in the year, an FBAR is due to FinCEN.
Sort this out before you arrive if you possibly can. An investor who sells a company abroad or realizes a large gain should time that transaction against the admission date, because the same sale can be entirely foreign income one week and fully reportable US income the next.
Counting to the I-829 window
Form I-829 is filed in the 90 days immediately before the second anniversary of the date you obtained conditional residence. File early and it gets rejected. File late and you need a written explanation showing good cause under 8 CFR 216.6(a)(5), with excusal left to USCIS discretion, which is a poor thing to gamble a family's status on.
Approval removes the conditions as of that second anniversary rather than reaching back to any earlier date. From then on you hold an ordinary permanent resident card, renewed on Form I-90 every ten years. While the I-829 is pending, the receipt notice extends your status and you carry it with the expired card to travel and to prove work authorization. Our page on I-829 approval and removal of conditions covers what arrives afterward.
Keep the paperwork the I-829 will need
Start the folder in month one. Two years goes quickly, and this evidence is far easier to collect while it is being created than reconstructed under deadline.
- Confirmation that your capital remained invested and at risk, including any redeployment the fund made during the period.
- Quarterly or annual reports from the regional center or the new commercial enterprise.
- Payroll records and I-9 files, plus the tax filings that support the ten job count.
- Your own entry and exit records, which later questions about travel history will depend on.
Regional center investors rely on the project sponsor for most of this. Ask early how the sponsor plans to evidence job creation, and read our page on proving job creation and sustained investment before the second year starts rather than after.
Does the conditional period count toward citizenship?
It does. The five years of permanent residence required for naturalization run from the date you obtained conditional residence, which is earlier than I-829 approval, and Form N-400 can be filed 90 days before those five years are complete. You also need 30 months of physical presence in the country during that stretch. USCIS will normally want the I-829 decided before it approves an N-400, so a pending removal of conditions can slow the last step. The USCIS overview of citizenship and naturalization sets out the English and civics requirements.
Two years of conditional residence sounds like a waiting room. Treat it as the evidence gathering phase it actually is, and the I-829 becomes paperwork rather than a crisis.