INVESTOR VISAS · EB-5 IMMIGRANT INVESTOR
EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Lawyers
Investment, jobs, and a green card.
EB-5 is the immigrant investor visa: the one investor path that leads directly to a green card for you and your immediate family. As your EB-5 attorney, we handle the whole arc: choosing between direct and Regional Center investment, meeting the job-creation requirement, building the source-of-funds record these cases turn on, securing conditional residence, and removing the conditions years later on Form I-829. Offices in Boynton Beach, Lake Worth, and Atlanta, in four languages.
GREEN CARD
The permanent investor path
DIRECT + REGIONAL CENTER
Both investment structures
CONDITIONAL TO I-829
Through removal of conditions
4
LANGUAGES
English · Spanish · Portuguese · French
THE BASICS
What the EB-5 immigrant investor visa is
EB-5 is the fifth employment-based immigrant preference, created by Congress in 1990 to bring foreign investment and jobs into the United States. The bargain is simple to state and demanding to execute: a foreign national invests a qualifying amount of capital in a US business, that investment creates a required number of full-time jobs for American workers, and in exchange the investor, along with a spouse and unmarried children under 21, becomes a lawful permanent resident. It is the only investor visa that leads to a green card, and eventually to the option of citizenship.
The program was substantially rewritten by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act, which reset the minimum investment amounts, redefined how targeted employment areas are designated, reserved portions of the annual visa numbers for certain investment types, and added integrity rules governing Regional Centers and the handling of investor funds. Those changes are why current figures matter so much, and why an EB-5 case should be built on today's rules, not the numbers that circulated in earlier years.
What makes EB-5 powerful is also what makes it exacting. There is no employer to sponsor you and no treaty to qualify under: the case is built entirely on your capital and your documentation. Done right, it is one of the most direct routes to permanent residence in the entire immigration system.
Direct investment or Regional Center
Every EB-5 investor chooses one of two structures, and the choice shapes the whole case. In a direct investment, you put your capital into a business you own and actively manage, a company you build or buy, and that business must itself create the required full-time jobs. Direct investment gives you the most control and the closest tie between your money and your enterprise, but it also puts the job-creation burden squarely on a single business that you are responsible for running.
In a Regional Center investment, you invest through a government-designated entity that pools capital from many EB-5 investors into a larger economic development project: a hotel, a mixed-use development, an infrastructure build. The advantage is job counting: Regional Center projects can count not only direct jobs but also the indirect and induced jobs the project generates in the surrounding economy, which is often far easier to document than the direct jobs a single small business must produce. Congress also reserves a portion of the annual EB-5 visa numbers specifically for Regional Center investors. The tradeoff is control: you are a passive investor in someone else's project, so the diligence shifts to vetting the project, its developer, and its economic model rather than running the business yourself.
Neither structure is better in the abstract. The right one depends on how hands-on you want to be, your tolerance for project risk versus operating risk, and the timeline you are working against. We walk through both against your actual situation before you commit a dollar.
Targeted employment areas and the investment threshold
The amount you must invest in an EB-5 case is not a single number: it depends on where the enterprise is located. Congress sets a standard minimum investment amount and a lower minimum for investments in a targeted employment area, or TEA. A TEA is generally a rural area or an area experiencing high unemployment, and investing in one lets you qualify at the reduced threshold. The idea is to steer investment toward the places that need jobs most.
Both the minimum amounts and the rules for how a TEA gets designated were changed by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act, and the thresholds adjust over time. That is why the location analysis matters at the front end: whether a project sits inside a qualifying TEA can change the required investment significantly, and it is one of the first things we evaluate.
The job-creation requirement
Job creation is the heart of EB-5. Your investment must create a required number of full-time positions for qualifying US workers, and you must be able to prove those jobs materialized, not just that you intended them. In a direct investment, the jobs generally have to be direct, W-2 positions at your own enterprise, which means your business plan has to be realistic about headcount from the start. In a Regional Center investment, the project can count indirect and induced jobs estimated through accepted economic methodologies, which is a major reason many investors choose that route.
The job requirement is also why timing runs long. The jobs do not have to exist on day one, but they generally must be created within a set window and must be sustained. When you later file to remove the conditions on your residence, proving that the required jobs were created and maintained is the central task. We build the case with that endpoint in mind from the beginning, so the job evidence you will need years later is being assembled from the first filing rather than reconstructed under deadline.
Conditional residence and I-829 removal of conditions
An approved EB-5 case does not hand you a permanent green card right away. When the petition is approved and a visa is available, you and your family first receive conditional permanent residence, a green card valid for a set period that carries all the rights of residence but is tied to the requirement that your investment and job creation hold up. Conditional residents can live, work, and travel like any permanent resident during this stage.
Near the end of the conditional period, you file Form I-829 to remove the conditions. This is where you prove the case actually delivered: that you made and sustained the required investment, and that the required jobs were created. If the government is satisfied, the conditions come off and you become a full lawful permanent resident, with the clock toward eligibility for citizenship continuing to run. If the record is thin, this is the stage where cases run into trouble, which is exactly why we build the documentation from day one. The I-829 is not the finish line you sprint toward at the end; it is the case you have been quietly building all along.
Your family is included
One of the reasons EB-5 is so attractive is that it is a family visa, not just an investor visa. Your spouse and your unmarried children under 21 are included in your petition and obtain conditional residence when you do, then move to full permanent residence when the conditions are removed. They can live, study, and (for your spouse and age-eligible children) work in the United States as permanent residents.
Because children age out of eligibility when they turn 21, timing can matter for families with older teenagers, and there are protections that can help in some circumstances. We flag those issues at the consultation so a child's age does not quietly become a problem months into the case.
The EB-5 timeline, realistically
EB-5 is a long game, and we would rather set that expectation honestly than sell speed. The path runs through several stages: preparing and filing the investor petition, obtaining conditional residence once the petition is approved and a visa is available, living through the conditional period while the investment and jobs mature, and finally removing the conditions on Form I-829. For investors born in countries with high EB-5 demand, visa availability can add waiting time, though the set-asides created by recent reforms can help in certain investment categories.
Processing times at each stage shift with government workloads and policy, so we do not hand you a fixed number of months and call it a promise. What we give you at the consultation is a realistic, stage-by-stage picture for your specific facts (your nationality, your investment structure, and where the queues stand) so you can plan around the reality rather than a brochure.
Source of funds: the part cases are won and lost on
If there is one place EB-5 cases succeed or fail, it is the source of funds. It is not enough to have the money: you have to prove, in a form the government will accept, that your investment capital was lawfully earned and can be traced from its origin all the way into the enterprise. Salary, business profits, the sale of property, gifts, inheritance, loans against assets: each has to be documented and connected, link by link, with no gaps the government can question.
For international investors, this is often the hardest part of the whole case. Records may sit in another country, in another language, under another jurisdiction's rules. This is where our languages and our diligence matter. We work directly with investors in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French to gather, organize, and present a source-of-funds record that holds together. We build it to survive scrutiny, because a request for evidence on source of funds is one of the most common reasons an otherwise strong EB-5 case stalls.
Why investors choose Delgado Purdy Law for EB-5
EB-5 rewards a firm that treats it as a specialty, and it is exactly that here. Jacqueline Delgado leads our investor practice with multi-client EB-5 experience across both direct and Regional Center cases, and she brings the full business-immigration picture (E-2, employment categories, and more) so an EB-5 conversation is never boxed off from the rest of your immigration strategy. You work with senior counsel directly, not a paralegal running your file with a review at the end.
You also get language access that is rare in this market. We handle EB-5 cases in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, which means an investor can discuss the money, the risk, and the source-of-funds record in the language they actually think in. For Brazil's active investor community in particular, native Portuguese removes a barrier most firms cannot. From offices in Boynton Beach, Lake Worth, and Atlanta, we build EB-5 cases meant to hold up all the way through the I-829.
COMMON QUESTIONS
EB-5 questions we hear in every consultation
EB-5 is the fifth employment-based immigrant preference category, often called the immigrant investor visa. Created by Congress in 1990, it lets a foreign national who invests a qualifying amount of capital in a US business that creates the required number of American jobs become a lawful permanent resident, along with their spouse and unmarried children under 21. It is the only investor visa that leads directly to a green card.
The minimum investment is set by statute and adjusts over time, with a standard amount and a lower amount for investments in a designated targeted employment area. Because these thresholds were reset by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act and can change, we confirm the current figure for your specific case at the consultation rather than quoting a number that may be out of date.
In a direct investment, you invest in and actively manage your own business, and that business must create the required jobs directly. In a Regional Center investment, you invest through a government-designated entity that pools capital into a larger project, which can count indirect and induced jobs and has a portion of the annual EB-5 visas reserved for it. Direct gives you more control; Regional Center makes job creation easier to document but makes you a passive investor. We help you choose based on how involved you want to be and your risk profile.
A TEA is generally a rural area or an area of high unemployment. Investing in a project located in a TEA lets you qualify at a lower minimum investment than a project in a standard area. Both the TEA designation rules and the investment thresholds were changed by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act, so whether a project qualifies as a TEA, and what that means for your required investment, is something we evaluate carefully at the start.
Your EB-5 investment must create the required number of full-time jobs for qualifying US workers and sustain them. In a direct investment, those generally must be direct positions at your own business. In a Regional Center investment, the project can count indirect and induced jobs estimated through accepted economic methods. Proving the jobs were actually created and maintained is central when you later remove the conditions on your residence.
When your EB-5 case is approved and a visa is available, you and your family first receive conditional permanent residence, a green card valid for a set period. Near the end of that period, you file Form I-829 to remove the conditions, proving you made and sustained the required investment and created the required jobs. If approved, the conditions come off and you become a full permanent resident. The I-829 is why we document the case thoroughly from day one.
Yes. Your spouse and your unmarried children under 21 are included in your petition and receive conditional residence when you do, then full permanent residence when the conditions are removed. They can live, study, and work in the United States. Because children age out at 21, timing can matter for families with older teenagers, and we flag that at the consultation so it does not become a problem later.
EB-5 is a multi-year path that runs through the investor petition, conditional residence, the conditional period, and I-829 removal of conditions. Investors from high-demand countries may face additional waits for visa availability, though recent set-asides can help in some categories. Processing times shift with government workloads, so we give you a realistic, stage-by-stage timeline for your specific case rather than a fixed promise.
Because you have to prove your investment capital was lawfully earned and trace it, link by link, from its origin into the business, with no gaps the government can question. Salary, business profits, property sales, gifts, inheritance, and loans all have to be documented and connected. For international investors whose records sit in another country and another language, this is often the hardest part of the case, and it is a common reason cases receive requests for evidence. We build the source-of-funds record to survive scrutiny, in the language you keep your records in.
You do not need to speak English to pursue EB-5, and you should not have to discuss something as consequential as your life savings through a translation service. Our attorneys work directly with investors in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. For Brazil's investor community in particular, native Portuguese lets you talk through the numbers, the risk, and the source of funds with an attorney who understands both the immigration law and how the money has to be documented.
EB-5 is scoped at the consultation, because cases vary widely in complexity, structure, and the source-of-funds work involved. Attorney fees are separate from the government filing fees and from the investment itself, and EB-5 is a substantial engagement given the documentation required. We give you a real number for your specific case before you commit. No quotes without seeing the file.
READY WHEN YOU ARE
Let's build an EB-5 case that holds up to the I-829.
Schedule a consultation with us. We will look at your capital, your goal, and your source-of-funds picture, tell you whether direct or Regional Center fits, and lay out a realistic timeline and cost before you commit to anything. If you retain us, the consultation fee is credited to your case.