EB-5 is the only passive route to a US green card: no employer and no achievements dossier — just an investment and a clean source of funds. After the 2022 RIA reform the programme became more predictable: fixed thresholds, investor protections and reserved quotas that route around multi-year queues.
The two deadlines do not coincide, and the earlier one matters more. Filing in the 1 October 2026 – 30 September 2027 window remains formally possible while the authorisation stands, but it no longer carries grandfathering: if Congress does not extend the programme, those petitions have no statutory guarantee of continued adjudication.
Filing on or before 30 September 2026 locks in the right to adjudication only: the “Protection from expired legislation” clause at 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S) requires USCIS to keep processing such petitions, bars denial on the ground that the authorisation has expired and bars any suspension of visa allocation to approved petitions — it says nothing about amounts.
The amount is governed by a different provision and a different date: under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(C)(iii) each adjustment applies “for petitions filed on or after the effective date of each adjustment”, that is from 1 January 2027, and the threshold applicable to a given petition always turns on its filing date (USCIS Policy Manual, vol. 6, part G). A petition filed between 1 October and 31 December 2026 still carries $800,000 and $1,050,000 — but without the lapse insurance.
The practical conclusion: filing before 30 September 2026 buys protection against a lapse, not a lock on the amount. It is precisely the class of risk that investment migration buyers systematically underprice: see status durability and investment migration models. Haste does not change the sequencing, though: asset restructuring belongs before the status, not after — US tax residency, exit taxes.
Thresholds and Mechanics
The base investment is $1,050,000; in TEA zones (rural areas and high-unemployment districts) — $800,000. The investment must create 10 jobs. Two formats: direct investment into your own business, or — in the vast majority of cases — via a licensed regional center, where jobs are counted through the project’s economic model. First comes a conditional 2-year green card, then the I-829 petition removes conditions based on the jobs actually created.
Those amounts are not permanent. 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(C)(iii) mandates automatic indexation: beginning 1 January 2027, and every five years thereafter, the thresholds adjust by the cumulative change in the unadjusted CPI-U, rounded down to the nearest $50,000, and the new figure applies to petitions filed on or after the effective date of the adjustment. The mechanism is statutory — it operates without a separate agency decision — but USCIS has published no figures. Practitioner estimates put the reset at roughly $900,000 for TEA and $1.2–1.25m for the standard category (cumulative CPI-U inflation of about 16.6% over four years; calculation by economist Ismael Fernandez, EB5Investors) — an estimate, not an official publication. The DHS/USCIS proposed rule of 2 July 2026 (91 FR 40676, RIN 1615-AC94, comments due 31 August 2026) codifies the indexation mechanism but moves neither the 30 September 2026 date nor the statutory thresholds. How this lands in the overall entry budget: the economic model of investment migration.
The Reform’s Key Manoeuvre: Set-Asides and Concurrent Filing
The RIA reserved quotas: 20% of visas for rural projects, 10% for high-unemployment zones, 2% for infrastructure. For India- and China-born investors this is a revolution: the set-aside categories currently carry no backlog, while the standard category stretches for years. The second gift is concurrent filing: from lawful status inside the US you can file the I-526E and I-485 together — and wait with a work permit and travel document rather than waiting for petition approval first.
Now the numbers. The State Department Visa Bulletin for August 2026: in the unreserved category All Chargeability Areas are Current, China-mainland shows a final action date of 1 December 2016, and India is U (Unavailable) — no numbers at all until FY2027 opens on 1 October 2026; the unreserved dates for filing are 1 March 2017 for China and 1 May 2024 for India. All three set-aside categories — rural (20%), high unemployment (10%) and infrastructure (2%) — remain Current for every country. Hence the working conclusion: today EB-5 makes sense primarily through the reserved categories, and rural first of all. Where no reserved quota fits the project or the timetable, the comparable instruments by purpose are Europe's golden visas.
The FY2026 annual limit is 186,000 employment-based preference visas, of which EB-5 takes 7.1%, i.e. 13,206 (State Department, Annual Numerical Limits for Fiscal Year 2026; the per-country limit is 924). On the statutory shares in 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(B)(i) that is roughly 2,641 visas for rural, 1,321 for high unemployment, 264 for infrastructure and about 8,980 unreserved. The State Department does not publish that per-category split separately — it is arithmetic off the 13,206 base, and actual availability differs because unused reserved numbers from prior years carry over.
The Risks Brokers Skip
The investment is not a fee to the state but a stake in a real project (usually development): capital return depends on the project’s success and typically takes 5–7 years. Choosing the regional center and project is an investment decision, not an immigration formality: look at the capital stack, collateral, the developer’s track record and the job cushion. And remember taxes: a green card brings worldwide US taxation from day one — restructure assets before the status.
EB-5 Against the Other American Routes
An investor with $800,000 to $1m is not choosing between EB-5 and nothing. Four American constructions sit in the same budget band and differ in what is actually bought: passive capital in a project, a payment, an operating business, or a dossier of achievements. The regional map compares them alongside the rest of the hemisphere in investor routes in the Americas and Oceania; the cross-section that matters here is this one.
| Route | What is bought | Entry | Status on grant | Tax and the live risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EB-5 | Passive capital at risk in someone else's project | $800,000 in a TEA, rural or infrastructure project, otherwise $1,050,000, plus 10 jobs | Conditional green card for two years, then I-829 to remove conditions | U.S. person from day one; the risks are the project's capital return and the country queue |
| Gold Card | A payment, run through the existing immigrant categories | $1m from an individual or $2m under a corporate sponsorship scheme, plus a $15,000 fee | Permanent residence processed as EB-1 or EB-2 | The same tax perimeter as EB-5; created by executive order and challenged in court |
| E-2 | An operating business the investor actually directs | No statutory minimum; a "substantial" investment proportionate to the business's value | Non-immigrant visa, renewable indefinitely while the business trades | No U.S. person status by itself — the substantial presence test governs; needs a treaty passport |
| EB-1A | A record of achievement instead of money | No investment: three of the ten criteria in 8 CFR 204.5(h)(3), or a major international award | Green card with no conditions to remove | U.S. person from day one; the risk is the final merits determination, at 66.9% approvals in fiscal 2025 |
The first split is between capital and status durability. EB-5 rests on a statute, with protection for petitions already filed; the Gold Card rests on an executive order of 19 September 2025 (published 24 September 2025, 90 FR 46031), intake opened in December 2025, one approval had been confirmed by the end of April 2026 against what the administration described as hundreds of applications in the queue, and a suit filed in the federal district court for the District of Columbia on 3 February 2026 argues that a payment displaces the requirements Congress set for the EB-1 and EB-2 categories. Until that case is decided the difference between the two is legal durability, not price. The separate "Platinum Card" at $5m, with its promise of up to 270 days a year free of tax on non-U.S. income, was not created by the order and is not open for applications; the Commerce Secretary has said it needs an act of Congress.
The second split is tax, and it runs the other way. EB-5, the Gold Card and EB-1A all deliver lawful permanent residence, which makes the holder a U.S. person taxed on worldwide income from the day the status starts and puts an exit charge in the way of leaving. The E-2 does not: it is a non-immigrant visa, and residence for tax purposes is decided by the substantial presence test instead — which is exactly why a family that wants to live in the United States without entering the worldwide-income regime immediately looks at E-2 first. The price of that is a treaty passport: neither Russia nor China is on the treaty list, so for that capital the E-2 is normally built on a second nationality, most often Turkish or Grenadian, with the three-year domicile requirement that came in with the NDAA for FY2023.
The third split is what the applicant has to supply. EB-5 and the Gold Card ask for money and a clean source of funds; EB-1A asks for twelve to twenty-four months of accumulated external evidence and nothing else, and its approval rate has been falling. For a founder whose achievements are real but not yet documented, the working combination is a temporary status such as O-1A while the evidence accumulates, with EB-5 held as the fallback that does not depend on anyone's judgement of standing in a field.