EB-5 Project Structures

How EB-5 projects are structured, what each structure offers, and how to evaluate one before subscribing.

Structure Pages

5 pages

EB-5 Direct (Standalone) Investments

Direct EB-5 is the original, permanent standalone form of the program: an individual investor places capital into a single new commercial enterprise the investor will operate, and that enterprise must create ten qualifying W-2 jobs without the indirect-job credit available in regional-center cases.

EB-5 Regional Center Investments

A regional center investment is a pooled EB-5 vehicle in which capital flows from a New Commercial Enterprise (NCE) to a Job-Creating Entity (JCE) and counts direct, indirect, and induced jobs under an economic methodology, offering investors job-creation leverage that direct EB-5 cannot match while exposing them to a different set of program-level risks tied to the September 30, 2027 statutory sunset.

EB-5 Rural Set-Aside Investments

A rural set-aside investment is an $800,000 EB-5 investment in a project that sits outside any Metropolitan Statistical Area and outside any city or town of population 20,000 or more, qualifying for the 20% rural reserved-visa allocation under INA § 203(b)(5)(B)(ii)(II) and for priority I-526E processing that has trended under 12 months in the post-RIA era, though that speed advantage carries its own visa-availability trade-offs.

EB-5 High-Unemployment Area Set-Aside Investments

A high-unemployment-area (HUA) set-aside investment is an $800,000 EB-5 investment in a project sited within a census tract, or set of contiguous census tracts, in which the weighted unemployment rate is at least 150% of the national average, qualifying the petition for the 10% HUA reserved-visa allocation under INA § 203(b)(5)(B)(i)(I)(bb), with broader project diversity than the rural set-aside but materially longer I-526E processing times.

EB-5 Infrastructure Set-Aside Investments

An infrastructure set-aside investment is an $800,000 EB-5 investment in a public-works project administered by a government entity, qualifying the petition for the 2% infrastructure reserved-visa allocation under INA § 203(b)(5)(B)(i)(I)(cc), the smallest and newest of the RIA's three set-aside categories, with comparatively limited project supply but emerging interest as rural and HUA categories saturate.

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