Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Understand full-time employment evidence
At least ten qualifying full-time jobs per investor are required, generally involving at least 35 hours per week. Qualifying job-sharing arrangements are different from simply combining separate part-time jobs. Apply the relevant standalone or regional-center method and worker eligibility rules; the investor, spouse and children are excluded from the count.
Complete the capital and residence requirements
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, 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 restaurant group staffed by part-time servers
Hypothetical example: a Sidney investor is offered a direct EB-5 investment in a US restaurant group whose staffing summary lists forty-two people. On inspection, twenty-eight are servers and hosts working between twelve and twenty-five hours a week, six are seasonal patio staff, and eight are full-time kitchen and management employees. The requirement is at least ten full-time positions, meaning at least thirty-five hours a week, for qualifying US workers, attributable to this investor. Two servers at twenty hours each are two part-time jobs, not one full-time job, unless the position is a genuine job-sharing arrangement in which two employees share one full-time position with its hours and benefits. Seasonal positions that end with the patio are not permanent. On these figures the group has eight qualifying positions today and would need to show, through a credible business plan, that the investment will create at least ten new ones. What usually goes wrong is a roster presented as proof when it is the question.
Which records prove hours rather than headcount
Payroll registers showing hours per pay period, quarterly wage filings, position descriptions with scheduled hours, and records establishing each worker’s qualifying immigration status decide the count. A direct investment counts jobs created directly by the new commercial enterprise, including through qualifying wholly owned subsidiaries; a regional-centre investment may also count indirect jobs under an approved economic methodology, which is why the same restaurant group can look different under the two structures. The investor, spouse and children are excluded, as are workers in nonimmigrant status and workers without authorization to work. The capital must be at the applicable level and at risk, the source and path lawful, and the investor must engage in management or policy formulation.
Sequence the hiring plan against the removal of conditions
The jobs need not exist on the filing date, but the plan must show them created within a reasonable time, and the petition to remove conditions, filed in the ninety days before the second anniversary of conditional residence, is where the payroll is examined against the plan. Ask the operator for the hours-based roster before committing, decide whether the direct or regional-centre structure fits the actual workforce, and keep the two-year residence period and the removal petition on a calendar from the day residence is granted. Where the operator promises to ‘convert’ part-time servers to full-time after the investment, ask for the schedule that would do it and the wage cost it implies; a conversion that would double the front-of-house payroll without a corresponding revenue plan is not credible, and the reviewer will treat it as such. It is better to count fewer jobs honestly and show how each will be funded than to present a roster whose arithmetic fails on first reading.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.