IN THIS GUIDE · Compare complete project proposals without borrowing qualifying facts
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Identify each project’s claimed category
Hypothetical example: one offering claims a reduced investment basis while another has different employment evidence. Confirm the actual qualifying category and threshold applicable to the filing date. Do not apply one project’s reduced-amount claim to another simply because the investor prefers its commercial terms.
Review the relevant jobs and structure
EB-5 generally requires at least ten qualifying permanent full-time jobs under the applicable standalone or regional-center method. Identify the evidence for the actual investment structure. Job figures from unrelated offerings should not be combined without a valid analysis of the real arrangement.
Trace the individual capital into the selected proposal
Establish lawful source and path and actual capital at risk. Separate project charges from qualifying investment. A source document may be useful across a comparison, but it does not establish that the same money has been committed to multiple incompatible transactions.
Keep risk and residence outcomes individual
Neither project forecasts nor a comparative ranking guarantees repayment or immigration success. A petition does not confer residence; applicable immigrant admission or adjustment approval establishes conditional residence, followed by later removal-of-conditions requirements. Review visa availability, admissibility and family eligibility with actual dates.
Use the current capital, job and residence conditions
The current standard capital minimum is US$1,050,000, or US$800,000 for a qualifying targeted employment area or infrastructure investment. Statutory adjustments begin January 1, 2027; use the petition filing date. At least ten qualifying full-time jobs per investor are required under the applicable standalone or regional-center method. Assess management or policy participation, including qualifying limited-partner rights. Conditional residence starts at immigrant-visa admission or adjustment approval; I-829 is generally filed in the 90 days before its second anniversary. Filing does not itself remove conditions or guarantee repayment.
Decide between a regional-center project and a direct investment
The investment must create at least ten full-time positions for qualifying United States workers, and the methodology for counting them differs between a direct investment and a regional centre project. The designation attaches to where the jobs will be created and is determined under the rules in force, on evidence such as census-based unemployment data for the relevant area. A project’s staff count or total hours should not be treated as automatically equivalent to qualifying full-time positions. Assemble records that explain lawful acquisition, account movement, transfers, gifts where relevant, loans, taxes, and the actual deployment of funds. Describe the actual agreement rather than treating a professionally managed project as proof that no participation condition exists, or inventing a requirement to supervise construction personally. Existing payroll is not universally new creation; troubled-business preservation has separate conditions. For a direct enterprise, that may mean preserving hiring records, payroll, hours, and the position chart; a regional-center case can require different economic and allocation evidence. Contractual investor repayment rights and guaranteed rates of return are excluded from qualifying capital; an enterprise’s sole-discretion buyback exception remains subject to sustainment and other requirements.
Conditional residence and the second filing
Reserved allocations exist for rural areas, high-unemployment targeted employment areas and infrastructure projects alongside the unreserved category, and visa availability can differ among them. The investor, spouse, sons or daughters, nonimmigrant workers and independent contractors do not qualify as direct employees. Keep one dated list of events with their sources, because the two calendars merge by accident easily: subscription signed, funds transferred, petition filed, petition approved, admission or adjustment, conditional residence beginning, and the filing window before its second anniversary.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.