Almost anyone can be an EB-5 investor. No degree is required and no minimum age appears in the statute. Nobody tests your English or asks for a resume. Four gates decide EB-5 eligibility instead. Money you can trace to a lawful source. Capital that sits genuinely at risk. Ten full time jobs for qualified US workers. A personal record clean enough to get you admitted to the United States. Fail any one of them and $800,000 buys nothing.
How much you invest, and where it has to sit
Geography sets the price. $800,000 buys in if the new commercial enterprise is inside a Targeted Employment Area, and $1,050,000 is the number everywhere else. A TEA is a rural area or a place where unemployment runs at least 150 percent of the national average, and since the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 the Department of Homeland Security makes that designation rather than a state agency handing out letters. Both thresholds take their first inflation adjustment on 1 January 2027. Petitions filed before then are priced at the current figures, which is the strongest practical argument against spending eighteen months shopping for a perfect deal.
Capital also has to be exposed to loss. A guaranteed return kills the petition. So does a redemption right you can exercise whenever you like, because a loan dressed as equity fails the at-risk test. Sponsors know this and write around it, so read the operating agreement instead of the brochure. Whether a project genuinely qualifies for the lower amount is worth checking yourself against EB-5 TEA Explained: Rural vs High Unemployment Areas and the $800K Rule.
Ten jobs, counted the government's way
Every investor needs ten full time positions, and 8 CFR 204.6 defines full time as at least 35 hours per week. Two half time roles do not make one job. The regulation excludes combinations of part time positions even where the hours add up perfectly, while a real job-sharing arrangement, meaning two employees splitting a single full time position, does count. Regional center investors may claim indirect and induced jobs generated by an economic model, which is why that route carries most of the volume. Direct investors count payroll, one W-2 at a time.
One myth is worth killing here. The 40 percent expansion test decides whether an existing business qualifies as a new commercial enterprise. It does nothing to reduce the ten job requirement, and it never has. How the counting works is set out in EB-5 Job Creation Requirement: How 10 Jobs Per Investor Are Counted.
Source of funds is where petitions die
Most refusals begin here. USCIS wants a traceable path from an original lawful earning to the escrow account, and a healthy bank balance proves nothing by itself. The regulation asks for a specific evidentiary package.
- Foreign business registration records for companies you have owned
- Personal and business tax returns of any kind filed within the previous five years
- Evidence identifying any other source of the invested capital
- Certified copies of judgments, plus pending civil or criminal actions from the past fifteen years
The 2022 statute pushed harder still, requiring proof that gifted or borrowed money was itself lawfully derived. A gift from a parent means documenting that parent's earnings back to a clean origin, sometimes across decades. Borrowing works when you are personally and primarily liable for the loan and the security behind it is your own property rather than assets of the enterprise receiving the money.
Currency controls complicate all of it. Chinese investors face a $50,000 annual foreign exchange quota per person, so capital usually moves through the quotas of relatives, and every relative involved becomes part of the record. Begin assembling this eighteen months before you expect to file. EB-5 Source of Funds Documentation and Hiring Top EB-5 Attorneys walks through the file a competent attorney builds.
Are you admissible?
Money does not cure inadmissibility. The grounds applied to every other immigrant apply to you at the consulate or at the adjustment interview.
- Criminal convictions, particularly crimes involving moral turpitude and almost any controlled substance offense
- Prior misrepresentation to a US immigration officer, including an old visa application that inflated a job title
- Unlawful presence, which triggers a three year or ten year bar the moment you depart
- Medical grounds picked up by the panel physician or civil surgeon
- Security and sanctions concerns, which frequently stop the wire long before they stop the petition
Nationality by itself rarely disqualifies anyone. Sanctions are a practical wall rather than a legal one. Investors from Iran and Russia frequently discover that correspondent banks refuse to move the funds, and an escrow agent who cannot accept a wire ends the matter before USCIS ever opens a file.
What EB-5 does not require
Accredited investor status is a securities law question, and USCIS never asks it. The issuer does. Nearly every regional center offering is a private placement under Regulation D, and Rule 506 deals are sold to accredited investors, which broadly means net worth above $1,000,000 excluding your home, or income above $200,000 for two consecutive years and $300,000 counting a spouse. Two regulators apply two different tests. You clear both or neither.
Age is no statutory bar either, although a minor cannot sign a binding subscription agreement in most states, so petitions in a teenager's name are structured with care or dropped. You also do not need to hold a US visa first. File from Hanoi and process at the consulate, or, when you are already in the United States in lawful status and a visa number is available for your country, file Form I-485 for adjustment of status concurrently with the petition.
Who travels with you, and how passive you really are
Regional center investors are often told they are purely passive. Regulation is a little stricter than the sales deck, because an EB-5 investor must be engaged in the enterprise's management, and the rights you hold as a limited partner or member under the operating agreement are what satisfy that. Voting when asked is the whole obligation in practice. A direct EB-5 investment in your own business hands you genuine operational duties instead.
Your spouse and unmarried children under 21 travel with you as derivatives. The Child Status Protection Act subtracts petition adjudication time from a child's age. What it leaves untouched is time spent waiting for a visa number, and for a backlogged country almost the whole wait sits there. At the far end of the process, derivatives are included on the principal investor's Form I-829 petition to remove conditions. They do not each file their own.
Watch two dates and one filing trigger
File Form I-526E for regional center investors as soon as the regional center has filed Form I-956F for your specific offering. USCIS must approve that I-956F before your petition can be approved, and some advisers turn the fact into advice to wait. Waiting surrenders a priority date for no benefit whatsoever.
Two dates then govern everything else. Regional center authorization runs through 30 September 2027. Petitions filed on or before 30 September 2026 are grandfathered, so they continue to be adjudicated even if that authorization lapses. Set-asides reserve 20 percent of EB-5 visas for rural projects and 10 percent for high unemployment areas, with a further 2 percent for infrastructure, and those reserved numbers are why an Indian or Vietnamese investor may reach a visa years earlier through a rural deal. The 7 percent per country cap that creates the queue lives at 8 U.S.C. 1152. USCIS publishes its own reading of the whole framework in Policy Manual Volume 6, Part G, and the agency's plain summary sits on the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program page.