IN THIS GUIDE · A seller with proceeds in hand, and the four things EB-5 will ask her to prove
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
The amount, the area, and the date the amounts change
The standard qualifying investment is US$1,050,000. It falls to US$800,000 where the money goes into a targeted employment area — a rural area or one of high unemployment — or into an infrastructure project. Those figures come from the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, which also provides for the amounts to be adjusted, the first adjustment taking effect on 1 January 2027. Wilhelmina should therefore treat the lower figure as time-sensitive rather than fixed, and confirm both the current amounts and the project's designation from official sources rather than marketing material. A targeted employment area designation attaches to the project's location and the data underlying it; a promoter's assurance that a project qualifies is a claim to verify, not a fact to rely on.
Ten full-time jobs, and what counts as one
The requirement that decides most EB-5 cases is job creation: at least ten full-time positions for qualifying U.S. workers, attributable to the investment and generally created within the conditional residence period. Full-time means at least thirty-five hours a week, and two part-time roles cannot be combined into one. The workers must be U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents or others authorized to be employed, and the investor and immediate family are excluded from the count. Where the money goes through a regional centre, indirect and induced jobs may be counted using reasonable economic methodologies, which is why so many investors choose that route. In a direct investment they must be real employees on a real payroll. Wilhelmina should ask of any project exactly which ten jobs are hers and how they are counted.
Lawful source, traced through every hand
The capital must be shown to have come from a lawful source and to have travelled a documented path into the investment. Wilhelmina's case begins with the sale of her company: the share purchase agreement, the closing statement, the corporate records showing what she owned and for how long, and the tax filings reporting the gain. It then follows the money through each account and each conversion until it reaches the enterprise. Gaps are the problem, not amounts. Where earlier capital funded the business she sold, that history may be reached for as well. Where a family member contributes, the file needs their source too, together with the gift or loan documents. This is the part of an EB-5 file that takes months, and it should begin before any project is selected.
Conditional residence, and what has to be true at the end of it
Approval does not deliver permanent residence outright. Wilhelmina and her qualifying family members would be admitted as conditional permanent residents for two years, and the conditions are removed only on a petition filed on Form I-829, within the ninety days before the second anniversary of that admission. What she must show then is that the investment was sustained, that the required jobs were created or will be created within a reasonable time, and that she remained engaged in the enterprise's management or policy formulation — a limited partner's rights in a properly structured partnership can satisfy that engagement, but complete passivity does not. Her spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one may be included as derivatives, so the age of a nineteen-year-old at filing is itself a planning fact.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-08. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.