United States EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program

The minimum investment depends on the filing date, with 15 March 2022 as the dividing line. Amounts are in US dollars:

For petitions filed on or after that date, the Targeted Employment Area includes infrastructure projects. Capital is defined as cash and all real, personal or mixed tangible assets owned and controlled by the immigrant investor, valued at fair-market value in US dollars.

Four things do not count as capital. First, assets acquired by unlawful means, whether directly or indirectly. Second, capital invested in exchange for a note, bond, convertible debt, obligation or any other debt arrangement between the investor and the new commercial enterprise.

Third, capital invested with a guaranteed rate of return. Fourth, capital subject to any agreement giving the investor a contractual right to repayment — except that the enterprise may hold a buy-back option exercisable solely at its own discretion.

EB-5 was created by Congress in 1990 to stimulate the US economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors; the Regional Center Program began as a pilot in 1992 and has been reauthorised repeatedly.

On 15 March 2022 the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act was signed into law as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2022, Public Law 117-103, imposing new requirements.

That Act also created visa set-asides by area of investment, counted for each fiscal year: rural areas 20 per cent, high unemployment areas 10 per cent, infrastructure projects 2 per cent.

Set-aside visas that go unused are held in the same category for one further fiscal year; only after the second fiscal year are the remaining unused visas released to the unreserved EB-5 numbers, during the third fiscal year

Two dates are fixed in the document itself. First, immigrant visas under the Regional Center Program are authorised only through 30 September 2027 — beyond that point fresh legislation is needed.

Second, the minimum investment amounts are to be adjusted for inflation, measured by the change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers from 15 March 2022 to the date of adjustment; those adjustments occur every five years, and the first takes effect for petitions filed on or after 1 January 2027.

Separately, in the case of a troubled business the investor must show that the number of existing employees is, or will be, no less than the pre-investment level for a period of at least two years

The investor must invest the required capital in a new commercial enterprise that will create full-time positions for at least ten qualifying employees.

An enterprise outside a regional centre must create those positions directly, meaning the enterprise itself, or its wholly owned subsidiaries, must be the employer.

An enterprise within a regional centre may create the positions directly or indirectly, and up to 90 per cent of the job creation requirement may be met with indirect jobs.

A qualifying employee is a US citizen, lawful permanent resident, or other immigrant authorised to work in the United States; the definition does not include the immigrant investor, their spouse, sons or daughters, nor any person in a nonimmigrant status.

Full-time employment means a position requiring a minimum of 35 hours per week; two employees sharing one full-time position still counts, but combining part-time positions does not count even where the hours add up

USCIS sets the scope of dependants in the opening sentence of the programme page: investors together with their spouses and unmarried children under 21 are eligible to apply for lawful permanent residence.

Two conditions repay close reading — unmarried and under 21 — because both must hold until the grant, not merely at filing. Their standing is derivative in the sense this page itself defines: a dependant family member is one whose immigration status comes from the status of the primary petitioner.

One thing this page does not answer is better stated than inferred:

The only passage addressing whether dependants must independently file to remove conditions on their residence sits inside the description of the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Modernization Rule, and that rule was vacated on 22 June 2021 in Behring Regional Center LLC v.

Wolf before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, with USCIS stating that it applies the regulations in effect before 21 November 2019. The filing duty of dependants themselves must therefore be read from the material on removing conditions, not taken from this page.

The status this programme grants, whether a visa or a residence permit, does not replace the holder's passport. The holder still travels on the passport of their own country, so the figure below belongs to the United States passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a United States passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the United States passport reaches 196 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

This runs the opposite way from most programmes, and a reader needs that first: in most countries a residence permit does not by itself create tax residence; in the United States the card the immigration authority issues is itself the test.

The Internal Revenue Service calls it the Green card test and puts it this way:

You are a resident, for U.S. federal tax purposes, if you are a lawful permanent resident of the United States at any time during the calendar year; and you generally have that status if U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued you a Permanent Resident Card, Form I-551, known as a green card.

Meanwhile the EB-5 programme page of the issuing agency itself does not use the word tax once across more than twelve thousand characters — the programme publishes no tax regime, it leads to a card, and the card does the rest.

The consequence for scope: U.S. residents are generally taxed in the same way as U.S. citizens, meaning their worldwide income is subject to U.S. tax and must be reported on a U.S. tax return, at the graduated rates, on Form 1040 or 1040-SR; and those amounts must be reported whether earned within or outside the United States.

That status is not easily shed: it ends only in three ways — voluntary written surrender to the immigration authority, administrative termination by that authority, or termination by a federal court.

And shedding it has a price: the expatriation tax under sections 877 and 877A of the Internal Revenue Code applies both to citizens who renounce and to long-term residents who have ended their U.S. resident status for federal tax purposes.

A person becomes subject to it on crossing one of three thresholds: average annual net income tax for the five years exceeding an inflation-adjusted amount, USD 206,000 for 2025; or a net worth of USD 2 million or more; or failure to certify on Form 8854 compliance with all federal tax obligations for the preceding five years.

Section 877A then applies mark-to-market treatment: all property is treated as sold at fair market value on the day before the expatriation date.

Section 7701(n) closes a further door: even without crossing the monetary thresholds, an individual continues to be treated as a citizen or long-term resident for U.S. tax purposes until notice has been given to both the Internal Revenue Service on Form 8854 and the relevant executive department.

Alongside sits the foreign asset reporting duty. Form 8938 is required of a resident alien of the United States for any part of the tax year where specified foreign financial assets exceed a set value.

The thresholds are in USD:

On deadlines: the return is generally due 15 April of the following year, with an automatic two-month extension to 15 June where both the main place of business and the abode are outside the United States and Puerto Rico on 15 April, and an extension to 15 October by Form 4868.

Read this cell within its scope: the immigration authority addresses EB-5 immigration requirements and says nothing about tax.

The Revenue Service addresses federal tax residence, the scope of taxable income, the expatriation tax and foreign asset reporting, but says nothing about state taxes, nothing about any particular double taxation treaty, and has no section specific to EB-5

On 14 November 2025 US Citizenship and Immigration Services published a new edition of Form G-1055, the fee schedule, returning the filing fees for EB-5 related petitions and applications to the pre-1 April 2024 Fee Rule levels. The basis is a court order partially staying the 2024 Fee Rule.

Those earlier levels cover six forms: Form I-526 for standalone investors, I-526E for regional centre investors, I-829 to remove conditions on permanent resident status, I-956 for regional centre designation, I-956F for approval of an investment in a commercial enterprise, and I-956G the regional centre annual statement.

On the enterprise condition, the new commercial enterprise must have been established after 29 November 1990.

One established on or before that date qualifies only if it was purchased and the existing business restructured or reorganised so that a new commercial enterprise results, or expanded through the investment so as to produce an increase of at least 40 per cent in net worth or number of employees.

A Targeted Employment Area is either a rural area or an area of high unemployment, defined as at least 150 per cent of the national average unemployment rate