There are two serious ways to enter the United States on the strength of money you are prepared to put into a business. They are structurally different, they suit different people, and the gap between them is not simply a matter of price.
The EB-5 immigrant investor programme gives you a green card. It has a published minimum investment and a job creation requirement, and the whole thing is designed to be a passive investment if you want it to be.
The E-2 treaty investor visa gives you no permanent status at all. It is a temporary, renewable visa, available only to nationals of countries with the right treaty with the United States, and it has no published minimum investment. In exchange, it is dramatically cheaper for many people and far faster.
This guide sets out both, with current figures, and flags the change coming in January.
EB-5: the numbers, and a warning about the official page
The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 set the minimum investment at:
- $1,050,000 standard
- $800,000 for an investment in a Targeted Employment Area
A Targeted Employment Area is a rural area or one with high unemployment. Most EB-5 investment in practice goes through TEA projects, for the obvious reason.
You must create at least 10 full-time positions for qualifying employees, with full-time defined as a minimum of 35 working hours per week. Outside a regional centre, the business must create those jobs directly. Inside a regional centre, indirect and induced jobs can count, which is one of the main reasons the regional centre model dominates.
The change coming in January. The 2022 Act provides that from 1 January 2027, and every five years after, the standard minimum is adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, with the TEA and infrastructure minimums set at 60 per cent of the standard figure. That date is weeks away at the time of writing. If you are considering EB-5 and the current figure is at the edge of what you can raise, the timing of your petition is a live financial question, not an administrative one.
A warning about sources. USCIS's own "About the EB-5 Visa Classification" page is, as at the time of writing, internally inconsistent. Its capital table still lists the pre-2022 amounts — $1,800,000 and $900,000 for petitions filed on or after 21 November 2019, and $1,000,000 and $500,000 before that — while a separate alert on the same page refers to $1 million and $500,000 following a court ruling, and the section itself carries a note that it is being updated to reflect the 2022 Act.
That is not a small thing. If you take your figures from the first table you find on a government website, you will plan around a number that has not been the operative minimum for years. Verify directly with USCIS or through an immigration attorney before you move money.
The Regional Center Program is authorised through 30 September 2027.
What EB-5 actually involves
The process, compressed:
- Choose a project, or structure your own business.
- Invest, or place the funds irrevocably committed.
- File the immigrant petition, documenting the lawful source of every dollar.
- On approval, either adjust status if you are already in the US, or go through consular processing.
- Receive conditional permanent residence, valid two years.
- File to remove conditions, proving the investment was sustained and the jobs created.
- Receive unconditional permanent residence.
Two aspects deserve emphasis.
Source of funds is the hard part. Not the amount — the provenance. You must document how you came by the money, through gifts, business income, property sales, loans, inheritance, with a paper trail that satisfies an officer who has never met you. Applicants from countries with informal banking records, or whose wealth was accumulated over decades in cash-heavy businesses, routinely find this harder than raising the money itself.
The money is genuinely at risk. EB-5 capital must be at risk in the commercial sense. A guaranteed return would defeat the programme's purpose and the petition would fail. People do lose their investment. The due diligence you would apply to any eight-hundred-thousand-dollar private placement applies here with extra force, because a failed project can cost you both the money and the immigration outcome.
E-2: no minimum, and that cuts both ways
The E-2 treaty investor visa is available to nationals of countries that have a qualifying treaty of commerce and navigation with the United States. If your country is not on the list, this route does not exist for you — and the list is a matter of treaty, not policy, so it changes rarely.
There is no statutory minimum investment. The test is that the investment must be "substantial" in relation to the total cost of purchasing or establishing the enterprise, and that the business must be a real, active, operating commercial enterprise — not a passive holding of property or securities, and not marginal, meaning it must do more than provide a living for you and your family.
In practice this means a small business can qualify. People have obtained E-2 visas on investments well under a hundred thousand dollars where the business was genuinely operating and the investment was proportionate to its cost. There is no published figure because the test is proportional, not absolute.
What you get and do not get. An E-2 is temporary. It can be renewed, potentially indefinitely, as long as the business continues to qualify. It does not lead to a green card on its own. Your spouse can generally obtain work authorisation. Your children can accompany you but age out at 21, which is a serious planning consideration for families with teenagers.
For many people the E-2 is the better route not because it is cheaper but because it is faster, reversible, and does not require you to put eight hundred thousand dollars at risk in somebody else's project.
Choosing between them
Choose EB-5 if: you want permanent residence, you have the capital and can document its source, you are comfortable with a passive investment at genuine commercial risk, and your nationality does not give you E-2 access.
Choose E-2 if: your country has a treaty, you want to run the business yourself, you would rather deploy capital into something you control, and you can live without permanent status.
Consider neither if: your real objective is a work visa and the business is a device to get one. Immigration officers see a great many businesses that exist only on paper, and the marginality test exists precisely to catch them.
Regional centre or direct investment
Within EB-5, this is the structural choice, and it changes almost everything about the experience.
Regional centre. You invest into a pooled project sponsored by a designated regional centre — typically real estate, hospitality or infrastructure. The great advantage is job counting: indirect and induced jobs, calculated through an economic model, can count towards your ten. You do not have to create ten payroll positions yourself. You are a limited partner, you do not manage anything, and the project handles the economic reporting.
The disadvantages are that you have little control, the project's success is somebody else's execution, and the quality of regional centre projects varies enormously. Programme authorisation also runs only to 30 September 2027, and the history of this programme includes lapses in authorisation that left petitions in limbo.
Direct investment. You invest in your own business, or one you control. You keep control, and you may prefer that if you intend to work in the business. But you must create ten direct, full-time W-2 positions — people on your payroll, working at least 35 hours a week — and sustain them. For an investment of $800,000, creating ten real jobs is a demanding requirement that many business plans cannot honestly support.
Most people who want to operate a business should be looking at the E-2 rather than direct EB-5, unless permanent residence is non-negotiable.
Due diligence on a regional centre project
Treat this as you would any private placement of comparable size, because it is one.
Read the offering documents properly, including the risk factors, and have a securities lawyer read them if the sum is material to your wealth.
Understand the capital stack. Where does your money sit relative to senior debt? What happens in a default? EB-5 capital is frequently the most junior money in a project, which is why it is available at the price the developer is paying.
Check the job creation methodology. The economic report should be prepared by a credentialed economist using an accepted model, with a cushion above the minimum rather than exactly ten jobs per investor.
Ask about the developer's track record, specifically on previous EB-5 projects: how many investors received approvals, how many had capital returned, and whether any project failed.
Ask about the exit. What is the expected repayment mechanism and timeline, and what happens if the project cannot refinance?
Check the regional centre's standing with USCIS, including any history of terminations or compliance problems.
Be wary of guaranteed returns. A guarantee is not just a commercial red flag; it undermines the at-risk requirement and can sink your petition.
Removing conditions: the step people forget
Conditional permanent residence lasts two years. Before it expires you must petition to remove the conditions, and this is where the investment's real-world performance meets your immigration status.
You must show the capital remained invested and at risk throughout, and that the required jobs were created, or in some cases will be created within a reasonable time. If the project underperformed and the jobs were not created, your petition can fail — years after you invested, with your family's status attached to the outcome.
This is the core asymmetry of EB-5 that marketing material glosses over. You are not buying a green card. You are making a risky investment whose failure can cost you both the money and the status.
Two routes business people overlook
The L-1. If you already own or work for a business outside the United States, and that business establishes or owns a US entity, the L-1 lets you transfer in as an executive, manager or specialised-knowledge employee. You generally need a year of qualifying employment with the foreign company in the preceding three years. The L-1A for executives and managers has a well-trodden path to a green card through the EB-1C category, which avoids the per-country backlogs that affect other employment categories.
For an established business owner, this is frequently a better route than either E-2 or EB-5, and it is routinely missed because people search for "investor visa" and never encounter it.
The O-1A. For individuals with extraordinary ability in business, science, education or athletics. It is evidence-based rather than capital-based, requires no investment at all, and has no cap. Founders with a documented record — funding raised, press coverage, awards, a track record of building companies — qualify more often than they expect.
The costs beyond the investment
For both routes, budget separately for:
- Legal fees. Substantial. EB-5 petitions in particular involve extensive documentation and the attorney work is not a formality.
- Project or administrative fees. EB-5 regional centre projects charge an administrative fee on top of the investment, often in the tens of thousands.
- Filing fees. For the petitions and for each family member's status application.
- Accounting and business valuation. Especially on the E-2, where you are proving proportionality.
- Translation and document procurement. Source-of-funds documentation from multiple countries over many years adds up.
What nobody can tell you reliably
There is no published success rate for either route that is current and meaningful. Approval statistics lag, they are not broken down in ways that would let you assess your own odds, and the variables that matter most — source of funds documentation quality, project viability, officer discretion — are not captured in any published figure.
Processing times are similarly unreliable in any written guide. They move, sometimes dramatically, and country of chargeability matters enormously on EB-5 where visa availability is subject to per-country limits. If you are from a country with heavy EB-5 demand, the wait for an available visa number can be the dominant factor in your timeline, outweighing everything else in this article.
Anyone who quotes you a confident timeline or a success rate is guessing or selling.
Frequently asked questions
How much do I need for an EB-5 visa? $800,000 in a Targeted Employment Area, or $1,050,000 otherwise, with inflation indexation from 1 January 2027.
Is there a minimum for an E-2? No published minimum. The investment must be substantial relative to the cost of the business and the business must be real and operating.
Does EB-5 give me a green card immediately? No. It gives conditional permanent residence for two years, then unconditional residence once you prove the investment was sustained and the jobs created.
Can I get my EB-5 money back? Potentially, after the conditions are removed and depending on the project's terms. It is not guaranteed and must not be, because guaranteed capital would fail the at-risk requirement.
Can I work for someone else on an E-2? The E-2 is tied to the enterprise you invested in. It is not a general work permit.
What happens to my children at 21? On the E-2, dependent children generally lose derivative status at 21. On EB-5, the Child Status Protection Act may help, but the analysis is technical and needs an attorney.
Does buying a house count as an investment? No. Passive real estate holding is not an active commercial enterprise for E-2 purposes.
Which countries have an E-2 treaty with the United States? The State Department maintains the list. It is a matter of treaty rather than policy and changes rarely. If your country is not on it, some people acquire a qualifying nationality through a citizenship-by-investment programme, which is a significant undertaking with its own costs and risks.
Can I move from E-2 to a green card? Not directly. People typically transition through a separate employment-based or family-based category, or by qualifying for EB-1C if the business grows and they hold a genuine executive or managerial role.
How many jobs does an E-2 business have to create? There is no fixed number. The marginality test requires that the business does more than provide a minimal living for you and your family, which usually means hiring, but it is assessed on the facts rather than against a count.
Does the EB-5 money have to be my own? It must be lawfully obtained and yours to invest. Gifted and borrowed funds can qualify, subject to specific rules about the loan's security and documentation of the lender's source of funds.
What happens if the regional centre programme is not reauthorised? Authorisation currently runs to 30 September 2027. The programme has lapsed before, leaving petitions in limbo. It is a genuine risk factor to weigh, not a theoretical one.
Can my spouse work? On the E-2, a spouse can generally obtain work authorisation. EB-5 conditional residents have full work authorisation as permanent residents.
Sources: About the EB-5 Visa Classification, USCIS · Congress reauthorizes EB-5 Regional Center Program and increases investment minimums, Fragomen · Green Card for Immigrant Investors, USCIS