Regional Center for Investor Visa

To encourage immigration through the EB-5 category, Congress created a Regional Center program. 3,000 visas have been set aside each year for people to invest at least $500,000 in designated Regional Centers In 2003, Congress gave CIS (formerly INS) discretion to "give priority" to EB-5 petitions filed through a Regional Center. A Regional Center is generally set up and run by a third party, that allows the prospective foreign national to invest $500,000 (in an economically depressed area in the US). The key differences between the individual investor EB-5 investment and the regional center is that the investor in the regional center need not show that his or her investment has created jobs for ten U.S. workers. This is because, upon certification of participation, the regional center must establish that its aggregated investment pool will indirectly create the requisite number of jobs by using accepted economic forecasting tools and feasibility studies. Another advantages of the regional center program, as opposed to the individual investor EB-5 immigrant investor program, is that it does not require the investor to be actively involved in the day-to-day operations of the business. While the investment may still not be a purely passive one, the investor may instead exercise a managerial role by being involved in the center’s policy-formulation processes.

Fiscal Year 2008 Regional Center Statistics

To support the popularity of the Regional Center program, USCIS recently releases statistics on EB-5 and the Regional Center EB-5 visas. During Fiscal Year 2008, there were:

1. 12 new EB-5 regional centers were approved;
2. 1017 Forms I-526, Immigrant Petitions for Alien Entrepreneur filed; and
3. 350 Forms I-829, Petitions by Entrepreneurs to Remove Conditions filed.

These numbers suggest some very good news for foreign EB-5 investors who seek to obtain a green card - while Congress is designating more and more new Regional Centers, there are still plenty of investor visas available to fill the annual cap of 10,000.