What Is EB-5? And Other Definitions

EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program terms and definitions:

EB-5: Congress created the EB-5 program in 1990 to stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investments by foreign investors. In return these foreign investors gain a 2-year conditional residency visa with the opportunity to make it permanent.

Regional Center: A regional center is a publicly or privately owned organization, that is designated and regulated by USCIS, that pool multiple EB-5 investors investments to promote and develop projects for U.S. economic growth.

USCIS: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is a government agency that oversees lawful immigration into the U.S.

TEA and RA: Targeted Employment Area (TEA) is either a high unemployment area or a Rural Area (RA). Congress has reserved 3,000 of the 10,000 EB-5 visas for investors in TEAs.

LPR: Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR) is also known as a green card. It has four parts:

• Form I-526 immigrant petition approval.
• Application for immigrant visa either through adjustment of status through the U.S. with USCIS or through application for immigrant visa through Department of State
• Upon approval (I-485) or admission (EB-5), applicant is given 2 years conditional residence status in the U.S. for he or she, a spouse and any unmarried children under the age of 21.
• If the conditions of the EB-5 have been fulfilled after 2 years of conditional residency, a petition must be filed to remove the LPR conditions to become an unconditional LPR.

Probative Value: When submitting documents for your EB-5, make sure those documents have “Probative Value”, which means that the source of the documents has value. (Example: Documents issued by the government have more probative value than documents issued by family or friends.)