Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Trace the lawful distribution
Use the relevant company, tax and banking records to explain ownership, authority and the actual transaction. Establish lawful source and path without inventing a rule that every legitimate distribution must follow one particular account structure.
Maintain all EB-5 conditions
The required capital is $1,050,000, or $800,000 for a qualifying targeted employment area or infrastructure project, subject to the statutory adjustment beginning January 1, 2027. Lawful source and path through the company distribution, at-risk investment, at least ten qualifying full-time U.S. jobs, and investor management or policy-formulation participation remain required. The investor, spouse and unmarried children under 21 may receive two-year conditional permanent residence, after which conditions are removed through Form I-829.
Hypothetical example: a seed wholesaler’s dividend versus a shareholder loan
Hypothetical example: a Central Saanich shareholder in a private seed-and-bulb wholesaler wants to fund EB-5 from the company. The accountant proposes two routes: a declared dividend, or a loan from the company to the shareholder to be repaid from future dividends. The reviewer’s first request is the same for both: the company’s financial statements and tax filings showing that the money was lawfully earned, the share register showing his entitlement, and the directors’ resolution authorizing the payment. The routes then diverge. A dividend, once paid and reported, is his own money. A shareholder loan produces borrowed cash; it can qualify if the proceeds become his own capital, are lawfully sourced and traced, and are placed at risk in the new commercial enterprise. USCIS does not require those cash proceeds to be secured by his assets or make personal liability a separate capital condition, although the loan documents must establish who borrowed and received the money. A loan taken out by the new commercial enterprise itself is not the investor’s capital merely because he guarantees it. What usually goes wrong is a loan that is never papered because it is ‘his company anyway’, leaving the file with a transfer that has no legal character at all.
Which records carry the distribution into the investment
Trace the chain without gaps: revenue in the company’s statements, the resolution, the transfer from the corporate account to his personal account, any tax withheld or reported, and the transfer from his account to the new commercial enterprise or its escrow. If the wholesaler is owned with a sibling, the register and the resolution must show that the amount matches his share rather than the whole payout. Keep the amount and the character consistent across every page: the same figure cannot be a dividend in the resolution and a loan in the bank memo. The capital must remain at risk in the enterprise, at least ten full-time positions for qualifying US workers must be attributable to him, and he must engage in management or policy formulation, which a limited-partner role can satisfy in a regional-centre fund.
Sequence the corporate step before the filing
Pass the resolution, make the payment, report it, and only then move the money on; a petition that shows the enterprise receiving funds before the company has authorized their release invites the question of whose money it was. Residence is conditional for two years, with the petition to remove conditions filed in the ninety days before the second anniversary. Approval does not return the capital, and the company’s continued profitability is irrelevant to that petition. If the company is mid-year and the accountant prefers to wait for the audited statements, wait; a distribution supported by draft figures that are later restated is a source-of-funds problem in the making. Where the wholesaler’s own revenue includes a one-off, such as the sale of a warehouse, trace that transaction separately, because the officer will ask whether the money distributed was operating profit or capital, and the answer must be visible in the statements rather than asserted in a letter.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.