United States · Residency by investment
Employment-Based Fifth Preference Immigrant Investor Programme
Amounts are UNCHANGED since the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act took effect in March 2022: USD 800,000 in a targeted employment area (rural or high-unemployment) or qualifying infrastructure project, USD 1,050,000 standard. They have NOT been inflation-adjusted for 2025 or 2026. The RIA's inflation mechanism runs on a five-year cycle and the first adjustment is scheduled for 1 January 2027, using CPI-U cumulative inflation since enactment — industry projections put the TEA figure near USD 900,000 and the standard figure near USD 1.2M, but no official number exists yet. Two separate deadlines matter: 30 September 2026 is the last day an I-526/I-526E filing earns statutory grandfathering; 30 September 2027 is when Regional Center Program authorisation itself expires absent reauthorisation.
For a UHNW family with no other US hook, EB-5 rural remains the only priced, rules-based green card — and the 30 September 2026 grandfathering cliff means the decision window is now measured in weeks, not years. Filing on or before that date locks today's USD 800,000, today's rules, and statutory protection if Congress lets the Regional Center Program lapse in 2027.
Qualifying routes
Statutory priority adjudication at USCIS and a 20% reserved visa pool. As of the July 2026 Visa Bulletin all reserved categories are Current for every country including India and China.
Same price as rural but half the visa pool and no statutory priority processing — strictly worse unless the project itself is better.
Almost no qualifying projects exist in practice. The July 2026 NPRM proposes that only DHS may designate infrastructure projects, and would bar standalone (non-regional-centre) investors from the category.
Draws only on the 68% unreserved pool — which is exactly the pool that is retrogressed for India and China. Rarely the right choice.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- $800k
- Total landed cost
- USD 800k investment plus roughly USD 70–90k in non-investment costs for a family: regional-centre administrative fee (typically USD 50–70k), USCIS I-526E filing fee (USD 11,160), I-485 or consular processing, and USD 25–50k in immigration and securities counsel
- Timeline
- 12–61 months — Rural I-526E petitions are the fast lane — reported averages around 8–10 months in 2026, with USCIS posting a 11.5–36.5 month range; high-unemployment 17–52 months; unreserved 30.5–61 months. Add consular or adjustment time, then a 2-year conditional green card before I-829 (~20 months).
- Physical presence
- No presence requirement to file, but the conditional and permanent green card must be maintained — in practice more than six months a year outside the US invites abandonment questions, and a re-entry permit (Form I-131) is required for absences over one year
- Family
- spouseunmarried children under 21 at time of filing (protected in part by the Child Status Protection Act)
- Permanent residency
- Conditional permanent residence on approval; conditions removed via I-829 after the 2-year sustainment period
- Citizenship
- 5 years of permanent residence, with physical presence in the US for at least half that period and continuous residence
- Language test
- English reading, writing and speaking plus a US civics test (N-400); age/disability waivers exist
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- USD 800,000 (TEA) or USD 1,050,000 at risk in a new commercial enterprise for a minimum two-year sustainment periodcreation or preservation of 10 full-time jobs for US workers (regional centre investors may count indirect and induced jobs)documented lawful source and path of funds — the single most common cause of RFEsno security or criminal inadmissibility
- Grandfathering cliff: an I-526E filed 1 October 2026 or later has no statutory protection. If Congress does not reauthorise the Regional Center Program by 30 September 2027, such petitions could be frozen exactly as they were in the 2021 lapse.
- Price rises 1 January 2027 by statute — not by discretion. There is no lobbying this away.
- Retrogression by country of birth is severe and getting worse. India's unreserved EB-5 category went UNAVAILABLE for the remainder of FY2026 in the July 2026 Visa Bulletin; China unreserved sits at a December 2016 final action date. Only the reserved set-asides are Current — and with an estimated 15,000+ investors already in the rural pipeline, rural is expected to retrogress first, probably within months rather than years.
- Redeployment risk is the least-understood exposure. Once the project repays the loan, the new commercial enterprise must keep your capital 'at risk' and 'in commerce' — so it redeploys into something else, often for years, chosen by the fund manager, not you. USCIS guidance on scope and timing is loose. A retrogressed Indian or Chinese investor can have capital redeployed for a decade.
- The July 2026 NPRM (published 1 July 2026, comments close roughly 1 September 2026) would create a third tier — a USD 1,400,000 'high employment area' amount — start the two-year sustainment clock at the date of investment rather than the petition filing date, and impose regional-centre penalties of up to 10% of investor capital. It is a PROPOSED rule only and is not law.
- The USD 800,000 is genuinely at risk. There is no guaranteed return and no principal protection; several post-2008 regional centre projects returned nothing.
- Approval of the petition is not approval of the project. Diligence the developer, the escrow, the job-creation model and the exit independently of the migration agent, who is usually paid by the project.