IN THIS GUIDE · A dairy sale funding an investment whose promised jobs are seasonal
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Which figure applies, and the date that will move both of them
The standard qualifying investment is one million and fifty thousand United States dollars. It falls to eight hundred thousand where the investment is made in a qualifying targeted employment area, meaning a rural area or one of high unemployment, or in a qualifying infrastructure project. Those amounts are set by statute as amended by the 2022 Reform and Integrity Act, which also provides for adjustment beginning on the first of January 2027, so a plan being built now should be tested against the figure that will apply when the capital is actually invested rather than the one quoted in a brochure. The designation matters as much as the number. A promoter's assertion that a site is rural or high-unemployment is a claim to be verified against the current designation, not a fact established by the marketing deck.
Ten jobs is a minimum, and each of the ten has a definition
The investment must create at least ten full-time positions for qualifying employees. Full-time means a position requiring a minimum of thirty-five working hours per week, and a qualifying employee is broadly a United States citizen, a lawful permanent resident or another immigrant lawfully authorized to be employed in the United States, which excludes any nonimmigrant as well as the investor, the investor's spouse and their sons and daughters. Two part-time roles do not combine into one full-time job, and a seasonal peak is not ten permanent positions. Where the investment is made through a designated regional center, jobs created indirectly may be counted using accepted economic methodologies, which is why regional center offerings often satisfy the requirement more easily on paper. A direct investment into an operating business has to produce the ten positions itself, and those positions have to still exist when the record is examined.
The sale of a herd and a quota is a documentable source, if it is documented
Lawful source of funds and the path those funds travelled are both examined, and they are separate exercises. Source asks where the money came from and whether it was lawfully obtained: here, the sale of livestock and of a production quota administered under a provincial marketing system, together with decades of farm income. Path asks how it moved from there to the investment, account by account. The documents that answer both already exist in a farm office: bills of sale, quota transfer records, herd valuations, tax returns and assessments across several years, loan discharges on closing, and bank statements showing each transfer without gaps. Money that sat briefly in a family member's account, or a cash amount with no deposit record, is where an otherwise clean file becomes unexplainable years later.
Two conditional years, one further petition, and the engagement requirement
A successful applicant and qualifying family members receive permanent residence on a conditional basis for two years. Form I-829 is then filed to remove the conditions, generally during the ninety days before the second anniversary of obtaining that conditional residence, and it must show that the capital remained invested and that the required jobs were created or, in some cases, will be created within a reasonable time. The investor must also be engaged in the enterprise beyond simply handing over money, through management or policy formulation, which a limited partnership structure can satisfy but which cannot simply be absent. A spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one may be included as derivatives, and their conditional residence follows the same two-year clock as the principal's.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.