EB-5 History
EB-5 History
Congress created the fifth employment-based preference EB-5 in 1990 as part of a general overhaul of the legal immigration system. INA § 203(b) (5), 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b) (5). Ten-thousand visas are available to investors in this green card category each year. To qualify, a foreign investor must establish a new commercial enterprise in which he or she must normally invest at least $1-million. If the investment is in a rural or high-unemployment area, only $500,000 is required. The investment must create or save at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or other immigrants authorized to work in the United States. The ten workers cannot include the investor or the investor’s immediate family.
Immigrant investors who wish to participate in the EB-5 Program must invest the required minimum amount of capital (either $500K or $1-million) into a new commercial enterprise or troubled business in the U.S. These foreign investors must establish that the investment capital derives from a lawful source, and that the money is both fully invested and at risk in order to qualify. The immigrant investor must file a Form I-526, Immigrant Petition for Alien Entrepreneur. If approved, the alien is granted conditional permanent residence.
Approximately 2 years later, the immigrant investor files a Form I-829, Petition by Entrepreneur to Remove Conditions. At the time of the I-829 adjudication, the investor must demonstrate that the investment business plan was followed, the money remained fully invested in the business, and that at least 10 full-time jobs were created for U.S. workers as a result of the investment.
On October 28, 2009, President Obama signed into law the fiscal year 2010 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security.
The law (Pub. L. No. 111-83) extends four immigration programs: (1) the non-minister religious worker program (section 568 of the law); (2) the "Conrad 30" program for certain J-1 foreign doctors (section 568); (3) the EB-5 immigrant investor pilot program (section 548); and (4) the E-Verify program for electronic verification of workers' eligibility (section 547). All four programs are extended for three years, until September 30, 2012.
USCIS has also been working to improve the investor program. The US Government recently consolidated all EB-5 related adjudications exclusively at our California Service Center (CSC). Previously, this workload was divided between two centers. CSC now adjudicates all Regional Center Proposals, the petition filed by the individual investor, related applications for permanent residence, and the subsequent application to remove the conditions on their status. USCIS believes that this workload consolidation will result in more consistent and expeditious EB-5 adjudications.
The 2007 immigration application fee rule set an updated fee level for the EB-5 application that ensures full recovery of the costs to process those applications. USCIS officers have also received more comprehensive training in the adjudication of this work.
As a result of these changes, processing times have improved significantly. A year ago it took an average of 14 months to process a regional center proposal. That now takes 4 months. Similarly, the average processing time for individual investor petitions has dropped from 7 months to 4, and the processing time to remove the conditions on status has dropped from over a year and a half to 6 months.
There are currently more than 80 approved and active Regional Centers present in 32 different U.S. States inclusive of the District of Columbia. That is up from 23 Regional Centers a year ago.