IN THIS GUIDE · Read the investor’s actual management or policy rights
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Locate the participation provisions
Hypothetical example: an investor receives limited-partnership documents with voting and policy rights. Identify what the documents actually provide. Qualifying limited-partner rights may meet the participation condition without requiring every investor to run daily operations.
Do not infer eligibility from the label
EB-5 requires participation in management through day-to-day managerial control or policy formulation. Read the real provisions rather than assuming all limited partnerships qualify or all investments described as passive fail. Commercial suitability and immigration requirements need separate assessment. For direct employment, qualifying full-time positions require at least 35 hours per week. Independent contractors, nonimmigrants, and the investor, spouse, sons and daughters do not count as qualifying employees; apply permitted regional-center methods separately.
Preserve the capital and job conditions
Lawful source and path, capital at risk and generally at least ten qualifying permanent full-time jobs per investor remain necessary under the applicable direct or regional-center framework. Existing payroll is not universally new creation; a troubled-business preservation case has distinct requirements.
Use the relevant filing and residence dates
Current thresholds are US$1.05 million or US$800,000 in qualifying reduced-threshold cases, with statutory adjustments beginning January 1, 2027 tied to the relevant petition filing date. Conditional residence starts through immigrant admission or adjustment approval, not merely signing enterprise documents. The lower amount applies to qualifying targeted employment area or infrastructure projects. After the applicable immigrant-visa or adjustment process starts conditional residence, track Form I-829 separately: its usual filing window is the 90 days before the second conditional-residence anniversary.
Read the capital rights before relying on the amount
Gifted or borrowed funds require lawful-source evidence and a good-faith arrangement that is not used to circumvent restrictions on permissible capital sources. Capital exchanged for a contractual right to repayment or a guaranteed rate of return is excluded. A purchase option exercisable solely at the enterprise’s discretion has a narrow statutory exception, exercising that option requires withdrawal of the petition unless the applicable sustainment and other requirements have been fulfilled. It is not an investor’s repayment guarantee.
From petition to conditional residence to removal of conditions
An EB-5 comparison is incomplete without the later steps: petition adjudication, waiting for visa availability by chargeability, immigrant visa processing or eligible adjustment, two years of conditional residence, and a petition to remove conditions ordinarily filed in the ninety days before the second anniversary. A standalone Form I-526 case and a regional center case supported by Form I-526E do not rest on the same job-counting rules, and a regional center's designation is a status conferred on the center, not a guarantee about any investment or its outcome. The jobs must be attributable to that investor's own capital, which is why offerings model allocations so carefully and why an over-subscribed project can leave a later investor without jobs to claim. Where a regional-centre project is used, ask how the approved methodology counts jobs, what the investor's exposure is, and what reporting the investor will receive. Where the investment is made through a designated regional centre, indirect and induced jobs may be counted according to a reasonable economic methodology. Add a row for what happens to the investor's position if the project is delayed rather than if it fails, since delay is the more common outcome and the one least often addressed in marketing. The investor should retain periodic statements, project reports and proof that the capital remains deployed as required through the sustainment period. Sequence the review before subscription, because a missing source document or job-model assumption may affect whether the investor proceeds, renegotiates, or declines the offering.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.