Investor Visas

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.

What are the Key Requirements for obtaining an EB-5 green card?

Every EB-5 case rests on three questions: is the money going into a qualifying business, is it enough money and is it genuinely at risk, and will the business create the jobs Congress asked for. The requirements below are the current ones, as rewritten by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022. Older figures still circulate widely online, so it is worth checking the date of anything you read.

E visa Treaty Country List

An E-1 or E-2 visa is only available to a citizen of a country that has the right kind of agreement with the United States. Roughly 80 countries qualify, but the two categories do not travel together: some countries support only E-1 treaty trader status, others only E-2 treaty investor status, and most support both. The first question in any E case is therefore simply whether the applicant's nationality appears below, and in which column.