It's official: USCIS will increase the EB-5 minimum investment amount to $900,000
USCIS published on July 24, 2019, new EB-5 regulations, which will increase the minimum required investment amount to $900,000, effective November 21, 2019. In order to qualify based on the current $500,000 investment amount, the investment must be made and the I-526 petition must be filed before November 21, 2019.
Therefore, it is extremely important for those prospective EB-5 investors, who want to qualify to obtain the EB-5 green card based on an investment of $500,000, to act quickly, since it typically takes weeks, sometimes even months, to free up the funds to make the investment and to gather the documentation necessary to file the I-526 petition. It should also be noted that USCIS has tightened up its filing requirements, which means that so-called "placeholder" filings with minimal documentation that are filed just in order to beat the deadline can be denied by USCIS without giving any opportunity to submit additional evidence. Therefore, the I-526 petition must be submitted, from the beginning, with the appropriate documentation of the legal source of the EB-5 investor's funds and with documentation, from the regional center, of how the project also meets the requirements of job creation, of the investment funds being properly deployed and at risk, and of the project being in a qualifying high-unemployment area, among other requirements.
It is important to note that there will be a tremendous last-minute rush by those investors who have been considering for some time to immigrate under the EB-5 program, but are now suddenly spurred into action by seeing the opportunity to qualify based on an investment of $500,000 slipping away. There will be only limited numbers of slots available in good quality projects in the final 120 days leading up to November 21, 2019, since established regional centers will bring only their projects that are in the final stages of preparation to market at the old $500,000 investment amount, while they will hold back newer projects to offer them at the new $900,000 investment amount for fear of not being able to fill the project with the full number of investors, since it can be expensive to rework the offering documents to offer the same project at a new investment amount. On the other hand, some regional centers might speed up their offering of projects that are currently in the planning stages out of fear that the location of the project might not qualify for the new lower investment amount of $900,000, but rather might qualify only at the higher investment amount of $1.8 million for economically healthy areas. I will explain that idea further below.
The new regulations will tighten up the definition of what areas qualify as a high-unemployment Targeted Employment Area ("TEA"). The significance of this is that under the current regulations, many economically healthy and desirable areas qualify for the lower investment amount of $500,000 based on being adjacent to less desirable, high-unemployment areas, instead of needing to qualify at the current investment amount of $1 million for economically healthy areas. Under the new regulations, far fewer economically desirable areas will qualify for the lower investment amount of $900,000, and will, instead, qualify only based on investments of $1.8 million, which is the new investment amount required for investments in economically healthy areas. As a result, many areas that used to qualify as TEAs with the lower investment amount of $500,000 will not qualify for the new lower investment amount of $900,000. USCIS has guaranteed that this will be the outcome both by tightening up the regulations defining the requirements for designating a TEA and by assigning itself the authority to designate which areas qualify as TEAs. In the past, state governments had the authority to make such determinations, and they often found a way to designate TEAs, to the benefit of developers and investors, in the interest of promoting investment in their state.
The bottom line is that, if you are interested to immigrate to the U.S. under the EB-5 program and can free up the capital to do so, now is the time to do so!