The EB-5 Investor Visa: Amounts, Backlogs and the Risk of Losing the Money

What the programme asks for

EB-5 has existed since 1990, but its current shape comes from the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act, signed in March 2022. That Act set two minimums: $1,050,000 for a standard investment, and $800,000 where the money goes into a targeted employment area, meaning a rural area, an area of high unemployment, or a qualifying infrastructure project. The investment must create or preserve at least ten full-time jobs for qualifying US workers, and the source of the funds is examined in detail. On inflation, the position as of September 2026 is straightforward and often misstated: the Act contemplates adjusting both figures every five years in line with consumer price inflation, the first such adjustment falls due on 1 January 2027, and no adjustment has yet been made. The higher numbers circulating in the market are projections of what that adjustment might produce, not published figures.

Regional centre or direct investment

The practical fork in the road is whether to invest through a designated regional centre or directly. A regional centre pools capital from many investors into a sponsored project and may count indirect and induced jobs produced by an economic model, which is why the great majority of applicants use one; the trade-off is that the investor is passive and wholly dependent on someone else’s project, sponsor and accounting. Direct investment means owning and materially controlling the enterprise yourself and evidencing ten direct jobs on an actual payroll, which is far harder to satisfy but keeps control in the investor’s hands. The two paths use different forms, different evidence and, in part, different pools of visas.

• Regional centre investors file Form I-526E against an approved project filing (Form I-956F); direct investors file Form I-526 and must create the jobs themselves.
• Approval leads to a two-year conditional green card; Form I-829 must be filed in the 90 days before the second anniversary to remove the conditions.
• Capital must remain invested and at risk for at least two years from the point the full amount is made available to the enterprise.
• Visas are reserved by set-aside: 20 per cent for rural projects, 10 per cent for high-unemployment areas and 2 per cent for infrastructure, with the remainder unreserved.
• Regional centre authorisation runs to 30 September 2027, and petitions properly filed on or before 30 September 2026 are protected by the Act’s grandfathering provision if the programme later lapses.

The queue is the binding constraint

Around 9,940 EB-5 visas are available each year, being roughly 7.1 per cent of the worldwide employment-based total, and no single country may take more than 7 per cent of them. That is what produces the backlogs. In the September 2026 visa bulletin the final action date for mainland China in the unreserved category stood at 1 December 2016, while India’s unreserved category was marked unavailable after its allocation for the fiscal year ran out in June, with numbers expected to reset at the start of the new fiscal year. The State Department also warned that demand might force the unreserved category to retrogress or close for other countries before the year ended. The set-aside categories were designed precisely to relieve this pressure and have moved faster, which is why rural and high-unemployment projects now dominate marketing — but they are finite too, and unused reserved visas roll over for only one further year before falling back into the general pool.

An approved EB-5 petition is a place in a queue, not a green card, and for some nationalities that queue is measured in years rather than months.

The money is genuinely at risk

The at-risk requirement is not a formality invented by lawyers: it is the condition of the visa. A guaranteed return or a guaranteed buy-back would defeat eligibility, which means every EB-5 investor is, by design, holding an illiquid, unrated, single-project exposure for years. The Securities and Exchange Commission and state securities regulators have issued repeated investor alerts about EB-5 offerings and brought enforcement actions against several, and investors in projects that failed have lost their capital — in some cases losing the immigration benefit as well, because a project that collapses may never create the ten jobs the I-829 depends on. A separate executive-branch route announced in late 2025 and marketed as a “gold card” channels large payments through existing employment-based categories rather than EB-5; it has attracted litigation and, on reported figures, very little take-up, and EB-5 itself, being a creature of statute, is unaffected by it. Everything here reflects the position as understood in September 2026, and this area changes quickly, including through congressional action. This is general information, not legal, immigration, tax or investment advice; eligibility, processing and outcomes differ by nationality and individual circumstances, approval is never guaranteed, and anyone considering EB-5 should take advice from a licensed US immigration lawyer, obtain independent financial advice on the project itself, and check the official USCIS and State Department sources before committing money. Plain Investor sells nothing in this field and is not affiliated with any regional centre, issuer or advisory firm.

This article is educational and general in nature. It isn’t personalized investment, tax, or legal advice — always weigh your own circumstances, or talk to a licensed professional, before making financial decisions.

Tags: united states, eb-5, investor visa