The qualifying capital is an investment rather than a fee, and it is genuinely at risk. Around it sit filing charges published in the USCIS fee schedule at Form G-1055, regional-centre administrative fees that are often substantial and are usually not returned, plus legal, accounting and translation costs for the source-of-funds file.
Separate the money at risk from the money simply spent
It helps to keep three buckets apart. The first is the qualifying capital, which is at risk in the enterprise and may be lost if the project fails. The second is money that leaves and does not come back regardless of outcome: a regional centre's administrative or subscription fee, legal fees for the petition and for the removal of conditions, accountants engaged to reconstruct thirty years of transactions, translation of any document not in English, and the cost of obtaining historic records from registries and banks.
The third is government charges, which are comparatively small and are published in the fee schedule, covering the immigrant petition, the immigrant visa or adjustment stage, and Form I-829 later. Investors regularly underestimate the second bucket, particularly where the source-of-funds work is complex, and they occasionally forget the third stage entirely because it arrives two years after everyone stopped thinking about the file. Verify all published amounts at the moment of filing.
- USCIS: EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program
- USCIS: Form I-526E, Immigrant Petition by Regional Center Investor
- USCIS: Form I-829, Petition by Investor to Remove Conditions on Permanent Resident Status
- eCFR: 8 CFR 204.6, Petitions for employment creation aliens
- U.S. Code: 8 U.S.C. 1153, Allocation of immigrant visas
- USCIS: Form G-1055, Fee Schedule