No. The qualifying capital, whether US$1,050,000 or US$800,000 for a qualifying targeted employment area or infrastructure case, must go into the new commercial enterprise. Administrative fees charged by the project, government filing fees and professional costs sit outside it and cannot be counted toward the investment.
Separate the investment from everything charged around it
Hypothetical example: Laurent is given a single all-in number by a project and assumes it is what the requirement asks for. It is not, and the distinction matters legally rather than commercially. The qualifying capital must be invested in the new commercial enterprise and placed at risk there.
A project's administrative or subscription fee is a payment to the sponsor for arranging the offering; it does not enter the enterprise as investment and does not count toward the threshold. Government charges are separate again, and current amounts should be taken from the USCIS fee schedule, Form G-1055, rather than from an email. Legal fees for the source-of-funds work are frequently the largest professional cost and are usually underestimated, because the effort scales with how complicated the money's history is.
Laurent should ask the project for a breakdown that shows the investment and the fees as separate lines, and keep it.
- USCIS: EB-5 immigrant investor program
- USCIS: EB-5 immigrant investor program, permanent workers
- USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 6 Part G: investors
- 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5): employment creation, capital amounts and job requirement
- USCIS: Form I-829, petition by investor to remove conditions on permanent resident status
- Department of State: Visa Bulletin
- USCIS: Child Status Protection Act
- USCIS: Form G-1055, fee schedule