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.
The infrastructure set-aside is authorized by INA § 203(b)(5)(B)(i)(I)(cc), as added by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (Pub. L. 117-103, March 15, 2022). The statute reserves 2% of the annual worldwide EB-5 visa allocation for investors whose qualifying projects are infrastructure projects. The RIA defines an infrastructure project as a capital investment project, administered by a governmental entity, that is contracted with a regional center or any new commercial enterprise, to acquire, design, plan, finance, construct, repair, manage, lease, develop, or improve public works.
The investment minimum is $800,000, with inflation adjustments scheduled to begin January 1, 2027. As with all post-RIA TEA designations, infrastructure-project status is now determined exclusively by USCIS through I-956F project adjudication.
The "administered by a governmental entity" requirement is the defining feature and the principal interpretive question. Clearer cases involve federal, state, or municipal entities directly contracting with the NCE or regional center for a capital project. Harder cases involve quasi-governmental entities, public-private partnerships (P3s) where the governmental role is partly contractual and partly regulatory, or projects where the governmental entity is a long-term tenant rather than the project's administrator. AILA practitioners have observed that USCIS guidance on the infrastructure set-aside has been sparse, and adjudication patterns are still emerging.
Other regional center compliance obligations apply unchanged: I-956 designation, I-956F project filing before any investor's I-526E, annual I-956G filings, I-956H declarations, $20,000-per-year-per-RC Integrity Fund fees ($10,000 for small RCs), and the $1,000-per-I-526E fee. Infrastructure projects are typically channeled through a regional center, given the project-side compliance burden and the typical scale of public-works financing.
Job-creation rules in infrastructure set-aside projects are the standard regional-center rules, with no infrastructure-specific carve-outs. Each investor must be credited with 10 full-time positions, calculated under a reasonable economic methodology (typically RIMS II or IMPLAN). The RIA caps indirect jobs at 90% of total qualifying jobs if construction lasts at least 24 months, and at 75% if construction is shorter. For shorter construction projects, direct construction jobs are discounted by (construction months / 24).
Infrastructure projects, by their nature, often involve substantial construction-period activity (public-works construction, federal-lease building construction, water and transit projects), which tends to support strong direct-construction job counts. Whether the construction-period job counts hold up depends on the construction timeline as it actually unfolds and the documentation that the jobs are project-attributable rather than relocated.
Each investor's petition must be supported by a Matter of Ho-compliant comprehensive business plan (Matter of Ho, 22 I&N Dec. 206 (Assoc. Comm'r 1998)) tied to a third-party economic-impact analysis. For infrastructure projects, the business plan and economic report should also establish that the project is administered by a governmental entity within the meaning of INA § 203(b)(5)(D)(iv); contracting documents, federal-lease documents, P3 agreements, and intergovernmental agreements typically anchor that showing.
Whether a particular project's job-creation methodology and infrastructure-classification showing will withstand USCIS scrutiny depends on the entire record, the contract structure with the governmental entity, and the discretion of the adjudicating officer.
Office buildings constructed under long-term federal-agency leases (such as GSA leases), particularly where the lease is non-cancellable and the federal-tenant relationship is integral to project administration. Whether a particular GSA-lease structure satisfies the governmental-administration requirement is decided case-by-case at I-956F.
Water and wastewater infrastructure, transit and transportation projects, and government office facilities contracted through a regional center or NCE.
Projects in which a governmental entity contracts with a private partner for design, finance, construction, and operation of a public asset. The level of governmental administration required for set-aside qualification is contested.
Training centers, public-safety facilities, and public-health facilities where the long-term governmental relationship is integral to project structure.
Transmission, generation, water-treatment projects administered by public utilities or government entities. Sponsorship and contract structure are critical to qualification.
The infrastructure set-aside has three principal attractions, and one significant constraint, relative to rural and HUA.
The first attraction is alignment with current administration rhetoric. Infrastructure investment has been a sustained policy theme across administrations and aligns with current "national interest" framing. Practitioners have observed that this alignment may insulate infrastructure projects from some policy headwinds buffeting other EB-5 channels, though no specific adjudication advantage has been formally promulgated.
The second attraction is the robust direct-construction job profile of public-works projects, which can provide margin under the indirect-job caps and reduce reliance on tenant-occupancy modeling. The third attraction is project predictability when a long-term government contract is in place. Federal-lease projects with non-cancellable lease terms, or P3 projects with multi-decade revenue commitments, can have more revenue predictability than market-rate hospitality or multifamily, which affects underwriting risk for investors evaluating capital preservation.
The constraint is supply. The infrastructure set-aside is the smallest reserved-visa allocation (2% versus 10% HUA and 20% rural), and the universe of qualifying projects is materially smaller. Practitioners report a small but growing pipeline, often clustered around federal-lease and state-public-works opportunities. As of early 2026 the infrastructure category remains current for all countries, which makes concurrent I-485 filings available for in-country investors in lawful nonimmigrant status. Whether infrastructure remains current depends on petition volume, which is hard to predict in such a small category.
The interpretive uncertainty around "administered by a governmental entity" is itself a trade-off. Investors entering infrastructure cases assume some adjudication risk that rural and HUA, with clearer geographic-test definitions, do not carry to the same degree. AILA practitioners have observed that infrastructure adjudication patterns are still emerging and that USCIS may interpret the set-aside narrowly or expansively in ways not yet clear.
Practitioners typically begin with the governmental-administration showing: which governmental entity is involved, what role it plays (administrator, tenant, regulator, contracting party), and what documents anchor the relationship (intergovernmental agreement, federal-lease contract, P3 agreement, public-works contract). Projects whose governmental-administration showing is borderline carry adjudication risk that should be discussed with counsel before subscription.
Next is the regional center's compliance posture: I-956 designation, I-956F approval, current I-956G filings, Integrity Fund payments, and any history of USCIS sanctions or terminations. Sponsor track record in infrastructure specifically (rather than in EB-5 generally) tends to matter more here than in other set-aside categories, given the contracting and execution complexity.
The project's underlying documentation should be evaluated with two infrastructure-specific overlays. First, the contract stack with the governmental entity should be reviewed for term certainty, performance obligations, and any provisions that could affect job-creation timing. Second, the third-party economic-impact analysis should treat construction-period and operations-period jobs separately and tie its assumptions to the contract documents. The affiliated-loan question is a frontline concern given the post-summer-2025 USCIS posture, and some federal-lease infrastructure structures have historically used affiliated borrowers. Refund-on-denial terms, sustainment-period mechanics, and redeployment policies should be verified in writing before subscription. Whether a particular infrastructure project ultimately satisfies USCIS depends on the entire record over a multi-year arc and the discretion of the adjudicating officer at each stage.
EB-5 approval rates have fallen materially over the past several adjudication cycles, and the rate at which USCIS issues Requests for Evidence, Notices of Intent to Deny, and direct denials has risen sharply. The June 2025 reinstitution of the CISNA/EDLO directive (instructing officers to deny rather than RFE in close cases) and the routine pairing of I-829 denials with Notices to Appear in removal proceedings are reshaping how EB-5 practice is done. Profiles that we and other firms saw approved without challenge two or three years ago are now drawing aggressive scrutiny, particularly on the still-emerging infrastructure governmental-administration requirement and on the affiliated-loan structures that some federal-lease deals have historically used, and some are being denied outright on records that, on their face, look as strong as records that previously cleared. Officers also vary considerably in how they apply discretionary judgments under the post-RIA framework. This climate is not unique to infrastructure cases, but it is real, and it informs how we counsel clients before, during, and after filing.
This page describes patterns we have begun to see in infrastructure petitions, a category in which adjudication signals are still emerging. It is general information about how this type of structure is typically analyzed, not a prediction about any specific case and not a representation that meeting any particular evidence pattern will result in approval. EB-5 outcomes turn on the entire record, the strength of the legal and factual arguments, the current adjudication climate, and the discretion of the adjudicating officer.
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Immigration counsel to Fortune 500 employers at a national firm · Adjudicated 12,000+ visas at the U.S. Consulate, Mexico · Working in U.S. immigration since 2008
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