EB-5 Investors

EB-5 Regional Centers

For EB-5 investors, an approved regional center can make it easier to satisfy the program's job-creation requirement: an investment channeled through a regional center may count indirect and induced jobs, not only the direct jobs an independent enterprise must create on its own.

What are the Special Regional Center Provisions?

Most EB-5 investors today do not go out and run a business of their own. They invest through a regional center, a USCIS-designated entity that sponsors projects and pools capital from a number of immigrant investors. Congress created this route in 1992 as a pilot and has kept it alive by periodic reauthorization ever since. The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 rebuilt it, and immigrant visas are currently authorized under the Regional Center Program through September 30, 2027.

EB-5: Investors

The EB-5 immigrant investor category offers a direct route to U.S. permanent residence for foreign nationals who invest in a U.S. business that creates American jobs. Unlike most employment-based green cards, EB-5 requires no employer, no job offer, and no labor certification. You petition for yourself, and your spouse and unmarried children under 21 are included in your case.

List of primary avenues to U.S. Permanent Residency (“Green Card” status)

What this page does. Permanent residence, the status commonly called a green card, can be reached by more than a dozen separate legal routes. Each has its own eligibility rules, its own petition or application, and its own place in the annual numerical limits. This page maps those routes so that the relevant one can be identified quickly. Every entry is an outline only; the linked pages carry the detail.

Can an EB-5 Investor invest in U.S. Real Estate?

Yes — but not by buying a house, a condominium or a rental building in your own name. Real estate is one of the most common destinations for EB-5 capital, and a great many green cards have been approved on the strength of real estate projects. What makes those cases work is not the property itself. It is the way the investment is structured and the number of American jobs the project creates.

Other Matters

This section covers a number of miscellaneous topics in U.S. immigration.