United States EB-5 Visa & the Gold Card — The Complete 2026 Guide

On 30 September 2026 — seven weeks from the date on this page — a statutory protection closes. Under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S), a regional-centre EB-5 petition filed on or before that date must keep being processed even if the regional-centre programme itself expires, and cannot be denied because of that expiry. A petition filed on 1 October 2026 carries no such protection, and the regional-centre programme’s current authorisation runs only through 30 September 2027.

That is one of three EB-5 dates in play right now, and they are routinely conflated. The second is 1 January 2027, when the investment minimums adjust for inflation by operation of statute. The third is the 30 September 2027 sunset itself, which Congress has extended before and may extend again.

A second confusion is worth clearing in the opening paragraph, because it is sending money in the wrong direction. The “gold card visa” launched by Executive Order 14351 on 19 September 2025 is not a new visa category. It routes a $1 million gift through the existing EB-1 and EB-2 preferences — and it therefore inherits their per-country queues, which for some nationalities are considerably worse than EB-5’s.

This guide works from the statute, the Visa Bulletin, USCIS’s own fee schedule and processing-time data, the Federal Register, and the IRS. It covers what an EB-5 visa buys, which lane is open for your country in August 2026, what the whole thing costs at the fees actually in force after Moody v. Noem, what happens when a regional centre is terminated, and the US tax bill you take on going in — and the one waiting on the way out.

Key takeaways

• The EB-5 minimum is $800,000 in a targeted employment area, rural area, or infrastructure project, and $1,050,000 elsewhere (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(C), in force 10 August 2026). Both figures adjust for inflation on 1 January 2027; DHS has not yet published the new amounts.
• Your country decides your lane. In the Visa Bulletin for August 2026, the unreserved EB-5 line is Unavailable for India and sits at 1 December 2016 for mainland China — a 9-year-8-month gap. All three set-aside lanes (rural, high unemployment, infrastructure) are Current for every country, including India and China.
• Congress set a 240-day goal for adjudicating an I-526E, and 120 days for a targeted-employment-area filing (RIA §106(b)). USCIS publishes 35 months for the same form as of 10 August 2026. Where a project’s Form I-956F is still pending, the two clocks run in sequence: 46.5 months at the petition stage alone.
• Government filing fees are far lower than most published guides say. After Moody v. Noem (D. Colo., 12 November 2025), Form I-526E costs $3,675 plus the $1,000 Integrity Fund fee and Form I-829 costs $3,750 — not the $11,160 and $9,525 still quoted across the web.
• An EB-5 green card is an opt-in to US worldwide taxation, and giving it back is not free: after 8 of the last 15 years as a lawful permanent resident you become a long-term resident, and ending that status runs the IRC 877A mark-to-market tests.

Which EB-5 deadline actually applies to you: 30 September 2026, 1 January 2027, or 30 September 2027?

Three separate EB-5 dates run at once, and each does a different job. 30 September 2026 is the grandfathering cutoff for regional-centre petitions under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S). 1 January 2027 is the first automatic inflation adjustment of the investment minimums under 1153(b)(5)(C)(iii). 30 September 2027 is the date through which regional-centre visas are made available under 1153(b)(5)(E)(i).

The grandfathering date matters more than the sunset date. A petition filed on or before 30 September 2026 carries an express statutory shield against the programme’s expiry. A petition filed after it depends on Congress reauthorising the regional-centre programme before 30 September 2027, exactly as Congress has done repeatedly since 1992. DHS’s own economic analysis in the October 2025 proposed fee rule assumes reauthorisation, noting that Congress “has a history of reauthorizing the program” (90 FR 48516, 23 October 2025, footnote 17).

The 1 January 2027 adjustment is automatic, and its size is not yet published. The statute sets the mechanism — cumulative change in the unadjusted CPI-U for all urban consumers, US city average, measured from 1 January 2022, rounded down to the nearest $50,000 — and directs DHS to publish the result in the Federal Register. As of 10 August 2026 no such technical amendment has appeared. Any specific 2027 figure you see quoted today, including on this site’s sister pages, is someone’s arithmetic rather than a published number.

One structural change is knowable in advance. From 1 January 2027 the reduced amount is fixed at 75% of the standard amount by 1153(b)(5)(C)(iii)(II). Today’s ratio is 76.19% ($800,000 against $1,050,000), so the discount for investing in a targeted employment area narrows slightly whatever the headline numbers turn out to be.

Direct investments outside a regional centre are not affected by either 2026 or 2027 regional-centre date. The standalone EB-5 category in 1153(b)(5) has no sunset; only the regional-centre programme in subparagraph (E) does. An investor filing Form I-526 for a direct investment is outside the whole grandfathering question, at the cost of losing indirect job counting and the set-aside project pipeline.

What does an EB-5 visa actually get you?

An EB-5 visa is a US immigrant visa in the fifth employment-based preference. The investor, their spouse, and their unmarried children under 21 receive conditional lawful permanent residence for two years; after the conditions are removed, permanent residence with no expiry beyond card renewal. In exchange the investor places at least $800,000 at risk in a new commercial enterprise that creates at least ten full-time US jobs (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(A), in force August 2026).

The statutory bargain has exactly four elements, and every genuine EB-5 requirement traces to one of them.

• Capital at risk. The investment must be at risk of loss in a new commercial enterprise. A loan back to the investor, a guaranteed buy-back, or a redemption right defeats it.
• A minimum amount. $800,000 for a project in a rural area, a designated high-unemployment area, or an infrastructure project; $1,050,000 otherwise (1153(b)(5)(C), in force August 2026).
• Ten jobs. At least ten full-time positions for qualifying US workers, and the statute expressly excludes the investor and the investor’s spouse, sons, and daughters from the count (1153(b)(5)(A)(ii)).
• A sustainment period. Capital must be “expected to remain invested for not less than 2 years” (1153(b)(5)(A)(i)). Two years is the statutory floor — considerably shorter than most published guides imply.

A green card is not a passport, and EB-5 does not shorten the naturalisation clock. An EB-5 green card holder follows the ordinary route: generally five years of permanent residence before an application for naturalisation, with the standard physical-presence, continuous-residence, English, and civics requirements. EB-5 buys the green card, not the citizenship timetable.

What a green card does not tolerate is absence. Permanent residence is a status you can lose by not living in the United States. Extended time abroad puts the status at risk of an abandonment finding, and there is no EB-5 exception. Investors who plan to keep their centre of life abroad and treat the card as an insurance policy are choosing the wrong product; the golden-visa programmes covered in our guide to golden visa countries exist precisely because EB-5 does not work that way.

Where the money actually goes is a separate question from immigration. EB-5 capital buys eligibility, not a return. The statute requires the money to be at risk; it says nothing about getting it back, and no lawful EB-5 structure can promise that it will be. Treat the expected return as zero and the immigration outcome as the product, and the decision becomes tractable.

Which EB-5 lane is open for your country right now?

Visa availability in EB-5 depends on country of chargeability and on which of four lanes you file in. In the Visa Bulletin for August 2026 (Number 17, Volume XI), the unreserved EB-5 line is Unavailable for India and 1 December 2016 for mainland China, while all three set-aside lanes — rural, high unemployment, and infrastructure — are Current for every country of chargeability, India and China included.

The same grid appears at the top of this page under “Which lane is open for your country right now” — Visa Bulletin for August 2026 (Number 17, Volume XI), Chart A.

“Current” means a visa number is available now. When a lane is Current for your country, an approved petition can proceed straight to an immigrant visa interview or, if you are lawfully in the United States, to adjustment of status — and, because a visa is immediately available, Form I-485 can be filed alongside the petition rather than years later.

A date means a queue, and the gap is the wait already banked. Mainland China’s unreserved final action date of 1 December 2016 in the August 2026 bulletin means only petitions with a priority date before that day can take a visa number now — a gap of nine years and eight months, on top of adjudication time. A Chinese-born investor filing an unreserved petition in 2026 joins the back of that line.

“Unavailable” means no number can be issued at all this month. India’s unreserved EB-5 line shows “U” in the August 2026 bulletin. The bulletin gives no EB-5-specific explanation. Its general notes attribute movement across categories to reduced issuance under Presidential Proclamations 10949 and 10998, warn that “retrogression may be necessary in the upcoming months”, and state that categories may become unavailable before the end of the fiscal year once annual, category, or per-country limits are reached. Employment-based numbers are allocated per fiscal year and the federal fiscal year begins on 1 October; the bulletin does not say when or whether India’s unreserved line returns.

Country of chargeability is not the same thing as citizenship. A visa applicant is normally charged to their country of birth, not the passport they hold, so acquiring another citizenship does not move you out of the Indian or Chinese queue. Cross-chargeability to a spouse’s country of birth is the ordinary exception and is worth checking before choosing a lane.

Why do the set-aside lanes have no queue?

The set-asides are newer than the backlog. The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 reserved 32% of the annual EB-5 allocation across three new categories — 20% rural, 10% high unemployment, 2% infrastructure — leaving 68% unreserved (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(B)(i)(I)). Because those lanes only began issuing in 2022, no decade-deep queue of pre-2022 petitions exists inside them.

Two mechanics keep the set-asides moving. Unused reserved visas carry over within the same reserved category into the immediately following fiscal year before falling into the general pool (1153(b)(5)(B)(i)(II)), which prevents a slow year from wasting the allocation. And DHS “shall prioritize the processing and adjudication of petitions for rural areas” (1153(b)(5)(E)(ii)(I)), a statutory priority that applies to the rural lane only.

For scale: EB-5 receives 7.1% of the worldwide employment-based level, which the August 2026 Visa Bulletin puts at “at least 140,000” for FY2026, with the per-country limit at 7%. The 2% infrastructure reserve is therefore a very small annual number in absolute terms, which is one reason infrastructure projects remain rare in the market.

The practical consequence for Indian and Chinese investors is stark and it is the whole argument for the set-asides. In August 2026 the same investor choosing between an unreserved project and a rural project is choosing between a line with no visa number available at all and a lane that is Current. The price difference between those two lanes is often zero, because rural projects qualify for the $800,000 minimum.

Availability is a monthly snapshot, not a promise. Final action dates advance, hold, and retrogress month to month, and a lane that is Current in August 2026 can retrogress if demand catches the annual limit. The Visa Bulletin is published monthly by the Department of State; check the current month before filing, and treat the grid above as dated evidence rather than a standing state of the world.

How long does an EB-5 petition really take in 2026?

USCIS publishes 35 months for Form I-526E, 34 months for Form I-526, 23 months for Form I-829, and 11.5 months for Form I-956F, each on its “80% of cases are completed within” basis at the Immigrant Investor Program Office (retrieved 10 August 2026). Congress’s stated goal in the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act §106(b) is 240 days for an I-526E and 120 days where the investment is in a targeted employment area. The published time is roughly 4.4 times the general goal.

Read §106(b) as a goal, not a deadline. Congress framed the 240-day, 120-day, 180-day and 90-day figures as adjudication goals that DHS may set fees to achieve, and DHS’s own analysis in the proposed EB-5 fee rule cites Barnhart v. Peabody Coal Co., 537 U.S. 149, 159 (2003) for the proposition that a missed statutory timing provision without a stated consequence does not strip an agency of the power to act late. The gap is evidence about capacity, not a cause of action.

The two petition clocks stack, and USCIS says so itself. The agency’s processing-time page for Form I-526E states that adjudication of an I-526E “depends on the adjudication of its associated Form I-956F” and “is only completed after the associated I-956F is adjudicated”, so the published I-526E figure counts only petitions whose I-956F was already decided. An investor entering a project whose I-956F is still pending is therefore looking at 11.5 months plus 35 months — 46.5 months, close to four years — for the petition stage alone, before any consular or adjustment stage begins.

The full sequence has four stages, and only two of them are the petition. Preparation and source-of-funds documentation typically runs months before anything is filed. The petition stage is the 35-month figure above. The visa stage depends entirely on the lane and country position discussed in the Visa Bulletin section of this guide — Current means it can begin immediately, a date means waiting for the priority date to become current. Then conditional residence runs two years, followed by the I-829 at 23 months.

A rural project carries a statutory processing priority that no other lane has. DHS “shall prioritize the processing and adjudication of petitions for rural areas” under 1153(b)(5)(E)(ii)(I). USCIS does not publish a separate processing time for rural I-526E petitions, so the size of that advantage is not measurable from public data — but the priority is in the statute, and it stacks with the rural lane being Current for every country in August 2026.

No current EB-5 approval or denial rate exists in public. USCIS states on its approved regional centres page that it “is reviewing inquiries about the previously posted Form I-526 and Form I-829 approval and denial statistics”, and the underlying data files were not published as of 10 August 2026. Any EB-5 “approval rate” quoted this year is derived from withdrawn or historical data. Passquire does not publish one.

Should you file in the unreserved lane or a set-aside?

Choose the lane by visa availability first and by project economics second. The unreserved lane holds 68% of the annual EB-5 allocation but carries the entire pre-2022 backlog; the rural (20%), high-unemployment (10%), and infrastructure (2%) set-asides hold less capacity but were Current for every country in the August 2026 Visa Bulletin. For an investor charged to India or mainland China in 2026, that is the difference between filing into a queue and filing into an open lane.

Rural and high-unemployment are different tests, not synonyms. A rural area is one outside a metropolitan statistical area and outside the outer boundary of any city or town with a population of 20,000 or more. A high-unemployment area is measured by unemployment: the weighted average across the census tract or tracts in which the new commercial enterprise principally does business — optionally including directly adjacent tracts — must be at least 150% of the national average.

Only DHS can designate a high-unemployment area now. The Reform and Integrity Act ended state and local TEA designation, which is what produced the gerrymandered tract chains of the pre-2022 programme. A designation lasts two years and is renewable, and an investor who invested while a designation was valid is not required to top up if the designation later lapses (1153(b)(5)(B)(ii)).

The infrastructure lane is restricted to regional centres. USCIS confirms in its EB-5 questions and answers that the infrastructure route, which finances a public works project administered by a governmental entity, is available only through a regional centre — a direct standalone investor cannot use it.

The unreserved lane is not obsolete. For an investor charged to a country with no backlog — every country other than China and India in the August 2026 bulletin — the unreserved lane is Current, and it is the largest and deepest part of the project market. The set-asides matter most to the two nationalities the queue actually affects, and to anyone already in the United States who wants to file Form I-485 concurrently.

What does an EB-5 visa cost once every fee is counted?

Government filing fees for an EB-5 case are modest relative to the investment and much lower than most published guides state. As of 10 August 2026 the fees in force are $3,675 for Form I-526E or I-526, a $1,000 EB-5 Integrity Fund fee on the initial I-526E, $3,750 for Form I-829, and $1,440 (paper) or $1,390 (online) for each Form I-485. The investment itself is $800,000 or $1,050,000.

The filing fees above total $10,125 for a single applicant who adjusts status inside the United States, and less for an applicant who goes through a consulate and never files Form I-485 or I-765. Against an $800,000 investment they are rounding error — which is exactly why the fee that is not published, the regional centre’s own administrative charge, deserves more of your attention than the ones that are.

Most of the internet is quoting fees that are not currently payable. In Moody v. Noem, No. 24-cv-00762-CNS (D. Colo.), the court on 12 November 2025 stayed the 2024 DHS fee rule in part as applied to EB-5, on the ground that the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act precluded DHS from adjusting these fees. USCIS reinstated the pre-31-March-2024 amounts effective 13 November 2025 and, for items postmarked after 26 November 2025, rejects filings that pay the higher amounts. Those were $11,160 for an I-526/I-526E, $9,525 for an I-829, $47,695 for an I-956F, and $4,470 for an I-956G — numbers still printed on many guides and still surfacing in AI summaries.

It is a stay, not a vacatur, and the case is still live. USCIS titled its own notice a partial stay, the court ordered further status reporting into 2026, and nothing has terminated the litigation. The lower fees are what you pay today; they are not a settled entitlement, and a reader planning a filing months out should re-check the schedule rather than treat these numbers as permanent.

Paying the wrong fee is now a rejection, not a shortfall notice. An investor working from a 2024-vintage guide who writes a cheque for $11,160 gets the filing rejected and loses the filing date — which, in a category where the priority date is the asset, is the expensive part.

A regional centre also charges its own fee, and no official figure for it exists. The administrative or subscription fee a regional centre charges is a private contractual amount set by the sponsor, not a government fee, and neither USCIS nor any other agency publishes a schedule of them. It is disclosed in the offering documents — the private placement memorandum and subscription agreement — and that disclosure is where the number must be read before signing. Ask specifically whether the fee is refundable if the petition is denied, and get the answer in the documents rather than in an email.

Legal fees have no official figure either. EB-5 representation is quoted per engagement and varies with the complexity of the source-of-funds story more than with anything else. The useful discipline is to ask for a written flat fee that names what it covers: the I-526E, the source-of-funds exhibits, responses to a request for evidence, the consular or adjustment stage, and the I-829 — because the I-829 is filed roughly five years after the first engagement and is frequently outside the original quote.

Budget for the things that are not fees at all. Source-of-funds documentation typically requires certified translations, accountants’ letters, tax records covering several years, and sometimes a licensed valuation. Those costs scale with how many jurisdictions your money has passed through, and they are the reason two investors with identical $800,000 investments can face very different professional bills.

Regional centre or direct investment — which structure fits?

A regional-centre investment lets the investor count indirect and induced jobs created by the project, which is why almost all passive EB-5 capital uses it. A direct investment requires the new commercial enterprise to employ at least ten qualifying US workers itself, in W-2 positions the investor must be able to evidence. Regional-centre petitions use Form I-526E and depend on the centre’s Form I-956F; direct petitions use Form I-526 and stand alone.

Indirect job counting is the whole reason regional centres exist. A $10 million construction project generates far more economic activity than payroll, and the regional-centre framework lets an economist attribute that activity to the investors. A direct investor gets no such credit: ten real people must be on the payroll, full time, for qualifying periods, with the documentation to prove it.

Direct investment suits operators, not allocators. An investor who intends to run a business in the United States, employ staff, and be present has a genuine case for the standalone route, and escapes both the regional-centre sunset and the I-956F waiting stage. An investor who wants a green card and no operating responsibilities does not — running ten jobs to immigration standards while living your existing life is harder than it looks on a spreadsheet.

How do you evaluate a regional centre without a shortlist?

Evaluate the paperwork, not the pitch. Five checks are available to any investor from public records and the offering documents, and each one is a statutory or published fact rather than a sales claim. Passquire does not publish regional-centre lists, rankings, or scores: which project you enter is a decision for you and your own advisers, and any site that ranks them has an interest in the answer.

• Is the centre currently approved, and is the project’s I-956F filed or approved? USCIS publishes both an approved-regional-centres list and a terminations list. Approval of the centre and approval of the specific project are different things, and the I-956F status determines whether your petition sits behind an 11.5-month queue before its own 35-month queue starts.
• Has the centre paid its Integrity Fund fee? Regional centres owe an annual fee of $20,000, or $10,000 if they had 20 or fewer investors in the preceding fiscal year, and USCIS must terminate a centre that does not pay within 90 days of the due date (INA 203(b)(5)(J)).
• Ask for the annual statement. A regional centre must provide its Form I-956G annual statement to an investor who requests it, within 30 days of the request (1153(b)(5)(G)(iv)). A centre that treats that request as unusual is telling you something.
• Read the job-creation methodology, not the job number. The number of jobs claimed is an output of a model; the model’s inputs — expenditure assumptions, construction duration, revenue projections — are what USCIS tests. A cushion of jobs above the ten-per-investor minimum is the single most useful line in an economic report.
• Understand where you sit in the capital stack. EB-5 money is frequently mezzanine or preferred equity behind senior debt. Being subordinate is not disqualifying, but it changes what happens if the project underperforms, and it is disclosed in the offering documents rather than the brochure.

USCIS’s own disclaimer is the correct frame for all of this. The agency states that approval of a regional centre “does not in any way” constitute USCIS endorsement of the centre’s activities, guarantee compliance with US securities laws, or minimise or eliminate risk to the investor — and that it makes no claim that its published list is complete, timely, or accurate. Government approval is a licence to operate, not a credit rating.

What happens if your regional centre is terminated?

Termination of a regional centre does not automatically kill the investor’s case. Under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(M), a good-faith investor’s petition or conditional residence remains valid, DHS must notify the affected investors, and status terminates only 180 days after that notification unless, within those 180 days, the new commercial enterprise associates with another approved regional centre or the investor invests in another new commercial enterprise. The original priority date is retained.

Termination is not a rare event, and the volume is published. USCIS’s own terminations file lists 782 regional centres terminated all-time, including 195 in calendar 2025 and 37 in calendar 2026 to date, against 567 approved regional centres as of 11 May 2026 (data retrieved 10 August 2026). Prior annual peaks were far lower: 136 in 2020, 132 in 2018, 108 in 2019, and 83 in 2017.

Termination usually means an administrative failure, not fraud. Centres are terminated for failing to pay the Integrity Fund fee, failing to file the annual Form I-956G, no longer promoting economic growth, or ceasing to operate. Reading a raw termination count as a fraud count overstates the risk; reading 195 terminations in a single year as noise understates it.

The 180-day rescue is specific, and it has to be used. The statutory mechanism in 1153(b)(5)(M) does five things that matter to an investor whose centre goes down: the petition stays valid, the original priority date is retained, derivative children are protected from ageing out, business-plan amendments made to effect the rescue are not treated as material changes, and recovered funds — including insurance proceeds — may count as investment capital. Re-association is not limited to a centre with the same approved geography.

Two conditions carry the real risk. The amendment must be filed within the 180 days, and the two-year sustainment clock restarts from the date of the subsequent investment — so a rescue late in the process resets a clock the investor thought was nearly finished. Form I-526E is the vehicle for the amendment, and USCIS confirms that no second $1,000 Integrity Fund fee is due on an amendment.

One category of investor is excluded from the rescue entirely. Subparagraph (M)(vi) withholds it from an investor whom DHS believes was a knowing participant in the conduct that led to the termination. Good faith is the qualifying condition, and it is the reason source-of-funds and due-diligence records are worth keeping for the life of the case.

Project failure and centre termination are different problems. A regional centre can be terminated while the underlying project is healthy, and a project can fail while the centre remains approved. Failure of the business is not automatically fatal either — the statute requires capital to be at risk, and if the jobs were created and the capital was sustained for the required period, the I-829 can still succeed. What defeats an I-829 is capital withdrawn early or jobs never created.

Can you file your green-card application at the same time as the petition?

Yes, when a visa number is immediately available. INA 245(n) permits Form I-485 to be filed concurrently with Form I-526 or I-526E if approval of the petition would make a visa immediately available, and USCIS confirms this in its EB-5 questions and answers. Because all three EB-5 set-aside lanes were Current for every country in the August 2026 Visa Bulletin, concurrent filing is available in those lanes to anyone lawfully present in the United States.

Concurrent filing changes what an investor gets in year one rather than year four. A pending Form I-485 supports an application for employment authorisation on Form I-765 ($260) and for advance parole on Form I-131, so the practical result is US work authorisation and a travel document years before the green card itself is adjudicated.

For an H-1B or F-1 holder, that is the strongest argument for a set-aside lane. A cap-subject H-1B worker whose employer sponsorship is the only thing holding their status, or an F-1 student approaching the end of practical training, converts a fragile employer-dependent position into an independent one. The chain is specific: a Current lane makes a visa immediately available, immediate availability permits concurrent filing, and the pending I-485 supports the work permit.

Concurrent filing is not available when your lane has a date or is unavailable. An investor charged to India filing in the unreserved lane in August 2026 has no immediately available visa number and therefore no concurrent I-485. The lane choice and the filing strategy are the same decision.

Adjustment of status is an in-country process, and leaving without advance parole abandons it. An applicant with a pending I-485 who travels abroad without a valid advance parole document is generally treated as having abandoned the application. Investors who travel frequently should have the I-131 in hand before booking.

What is the gold card visa, legally?

The gold card visa is not a visa category. Executive Order 14351, “The Gold Card”, signed 19 September 2025 and published at 90 FR 46031 on 24 September 2025, directs that an unrestricted gift to the Department of Commerce under 15 U.S.C. 1522 — $1 million from an individual, $2 million from a corporation on an individual’s behalf — be treated as evidence of eligibility under the existing EB-1A, EB-2 exceptional-ability, and national-interest-waiver classifications. No new category was created, and Congress passed nothing.

Section 2(b) of the order is the whole mechanism. It instructs the agencies to treat the gift as evidence of eligibility under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(1)(A) — the EB-1A extraordinary-ability preference — and as evidence of exceptional business ability and national benefit under 1153(b)(2)(A), and of eligibility for a national-interest waiver under 1153(b)(2)(B). A Gold Card holder is an EB-1 or EB-2 immigrant who paid for an evidentiary presumption.

Section 3 makes it subject to the same visa numbers as everyone else. The order states expressly that the programme operates within “the limits on the numbers of visas specified in 8 U.S.C. 1151 et seq.” An executive order cannot create visa numbers; only Congress can.

The Gold Card does not currently touch EB-5. Section 3(f) directs the agencies to “consider expanding” the programme to applicants under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5) — the EB-5 preference. As of 10 August 2026 that expansion has not happened, and no Federal Register document implementing it has been published.

There is a real filing channel. USCIS created Form I-140G, “Immigrant Petition for the Gold Card Program”, OMB control number 1615-0167, under docket USCIS-2025-0502. The 60-day notice appeared at 91 FR 11559 on 10 March 2026 and the 30-day notice at 91 FR 32074 on 29 May 2026, with comments closing 29 June 2026. USCIS’s own paperwork burden estimate for the form is 1,520 annual self-petitioners and 72 annual corporate petitioners.

The official site publishes the terms, and they are steeper than the headline. The government site trumpcard.gov, operated with the Department of Commerce, states a $15,000 non-refundable DHS processing fee, followed by the $1 million gift after vetting. Each family member is subject to an additional $15,000 fee and an additional $1 million gift. The Corporate Gold Card is $2 million per employee, with a 1% annual maintenance fee and a 5% transfer fee. A family of three therefore faces $3 million in gifts plus $45,000 in processing fees.

On tax the official site is explicit, and it matches the EB-5 position. trumpcard.gov states that applicants “will be subject to U.S. tax, including on non-U.S. income”. The Gold Card confers, in its own words, “lawful permanent resident status as an EB-1 or EB-2 visa holder” — the same worldwide-taxation exposure discussed later in this guide.

No agency has published uptake data. As of 10 August 2026 neither DHS nor Commerce has published statistics on Gold Card applications, payments, or approvals. The only official volume figure in the public record is USCIS’s own burden estimate of 1,520 self-petitioners plus 72 corporate petitioners across both forms of the programme, which is a planning assumption rather than a count of what has happened.

The programme is being litigated, and it is operating. American Association of University Professors v. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:26-cv-00300 (D.D.C.), filed 3 February 2026 before Judge Richard J. Leon, challenges the programme under the Administrative Procedure Act on the argument that paid applicants crowd out merits-based EB-1 and EB-2 applicants against a fixed statutory cap. The government’s motion to dismiss was filed 25 June 2026 and the plaintiffs’ opposition on 3 August 2026. There has been no merits ruling and no injunction as of 10 August 2026, so the programme continues to accept applications.

The Platinum Card does not exist yet. trumpcard.gov states that “The Trump Platinum Card has not yet been released” and operates a waitlist, indicating a $5 million price for up to 270 days of US residence without US tax on non-US income, with a warning that the price may change. Its central promise sits in tension with the substantial-presence test in IRC 7701(b), which counts days of presence rather than immigration category, and changing that test would appear to require legislation. Treat the Platinum Card as announced, not enacted.

Does the gold card visa get you a green card faster than EB-5?

Not for every nationality, and for some it is dramatically slower. Because Executive Order 14351 routes Gold Card applicants through EB-1 and EB-2 rather than creating a category, a Gold Card applicant inherits the EB-1 or EB-2 per-country queue. In the Visa Bulletin for August 2026, EB-2 India is Unavailable and EB-1 India is 15 October 2022, while all three EB-5 set-aside lanes are Current for India.

For an Indian national in August 2026 the arithmetic is unambiguous. A Gold Card costs $1,015,000 for a single applicant — the $1 million gift plus the $15,000 processing fee — and delivers a petition into EB-2, which is Unavailable, or EB-1, which is running a final-action date of 15 October 2022. An EB-5 rural or high-unemployment investment costs $800,000, and that lane is Current. One route is more expensive and closed; the other is cheaper and open.

A gift and an investment are also different in kind. The $1 million Gold Card payment is a gift to the Department of Commerce under 15 U.S.C. 1522 — it is gone by design. The $800,000 EB-5 payment is capital at risk in a commercial enterprise: it can be lost, and it carries no guarantee, but the structure contemplates repayment after the sustainment period. Comparing $1,015,000 against $800,000 understates the difference, because only one of the two numbers can ever come back.

The official site concedes the availability problem in its own words. trumpcard.gov states that the process “should take weeks” but warns that “a small number of countries may have wait times of up to a year or more based on visa availability”. Read that against the August 2026 bulletin: EB-2 India is not a wait of up to a year, it is a category with no numbers available that month.

Expedited processing and visa availability are separate constraints. Faster adjudication of a petition does not produce a visa number. An applicant whose petition is approved in weeks still waits at the front of a queue governed by 8 U.S.C. 1151 and 1152, which is exactly the limit Executive Order 14351 §3 acknowledges.

Where the Gold Card is genuinely competitive is where no queue exists. For a national of a country with no EB-1 or EB-2 backlog — every country other than China and India in the August 2026 bulletin — both categories are Current, and an expedited EB-1 or EB-2 petition with a purchased evidentiary presumption is a real alternative to a four-year EB-5 petition stage. That comparison turns on the price of speed, not on availability.

What US tax do you take on with an EB-5 green card?

A lawful permanent resident is a US tax resident on worldwide income. Under the green-card test in IRC 7701(b), residency begins on the first day of physical presence in the United States as a lawful permanent resident in the year the test is met, and from that day the United States taxes income from every country, not only US-source income. EB-5 is the one investment-migration route where the buyer is opting into US worldwide taxation rather than out of somewhere else’s.

The residency starting date is a date you partly control. Conditional permanent residence begins at admission on the immigrant visa or at approval of adjustment of status, and for a consular case the first entry sets the clock. An investor with a large capital gain, a business sale, or a deferred-compensation event pending has a planning window that closes the moment they land — and it closes for the tax year, not for the day.

Worldwide income means the whole return, not a surcharge. A US tax resident files Form 1040 reporting global income; foreign tax credits and treaty provisions can relieve double taxation, but the filing obligation and the US measurement of income apply regardless. Income that is tax-free at home is frequently not tax-free in the US measurement — the classic examples being certain foreign pension accruals and gains sheltered by a domestic wrapper.

Reporting obligations arrive with residency and carry their own penalties. A US tax resident with foreign financial accounts exceeding $10,000 in aggregate files FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR); specified foreign financial assets above the applicable thresholds are reported on Form 8938; and foreign funds are often passive foreign investment companies requiring Form 8621. Those filings are separate from the tax itself, and the penalties attach to the failure to file rather than to any tax owed.

Non-US funds held on the way in deserve a look before the card issues. The PFIC regime is punitive by design and is discussed in detail in our golden visa countries guide, which covers the same problem from the position of a US person holding European funds. The EB-5-specific point is timing: restructuring is far easier before the residency starting date than after it.

State tax is a second, separate question. US federal residency does not decide state residency, and states apply their own domicile and day-count rules. Where an EB-5 investor physically settles can change the total bill more than any federal election available to them.

What happens tax-wise if you give the green card back?

Surrendering a green card is not automatically a tax-free exit. A person who has been a lawful permanent resident in at least 8 of the last 15 taxable years is a long-term resident under IRC 877(e), and ending that status triggers the same expatriation regime that applies to citizens who renounce: the IRC 877A mark-to-market rules, tested against net worth, average income tax, and tax-compliance certification.

The eight-year count is generous in the wrong direction. A partial year of permanent residence counts as a full year for the 8-of-15 test, so an investor who becomes a permanent resident in December 2026 and abandons status in January 2034 can reach eight taxable years having spent barely seven calendar years as a resident. The trigger arrives earlier than most people plan for.

The mark-to-market charge is a deemed sale, not a tax on money received. For a covered expatriate, IRC 877A treats worldwide property as sold at fair market value on the day before expatriation, with the first $910,000 of net gain excluded for 2026. A person with appreciated but unsold assets can face a tax bill with no liquidity event behind it — which is precisely how an $800,000 investment made for immigration reasons produces a tax event years later that nobody mentioned at the outset.

The certification test catches the organised as well as the careless. Failing to certify five years of federal tax compliance on Form 8854 makes a person a covered expatriate even if their net worth is modest and their income tax small. For long-term residents who filed inconsistently in their first years in the US, that is the most common route into covered status.

Abandoning status has a formal mechanism, and drifting out of it is worse. A green card is formally surrendered by filing Form I-407 or on a determination by an immigration judge or consular officer. A lawful permanent resident who simply stops coming to the United States generally remains a US tax resident until status is formally terminated, which means the filing obligations continue while the immigration benefit is already effectively lost.

Renunciation of US citizenship is a different procedure with the same tax tests. The mechanics of renouncing — the consular appointment, Form DS-4079, the fee, and the order of operations for Americans acquiring a second citizenship first — belong to our citizenship by investment guide. What EB-5 investors need from that page is the sequencing; the trigger described here is the long-term-resident rule, which applies without any citizenship ever being involved.

Who can you bring, and what happens if a child turns 21?

An EB-5 petition covers the investor, their spouse, and their unmarried children under 21 as derivative beneficiaries, with no additional investment for each family member. Age is measured against the Child Status Protection Act rather than the calendar: the CSPA subtracts the time the petition was pending from the child’s age at the date a visa becomes available, which matters enormously when the petition itself takes 35 months.

Derivatives get the principal investor’s priority date and category. Spouse and children are admitted in the same EB-5 classification and, when they adjust or enter, receive the same two-year conditional residence. Removal of conditions on Form I-829 covers the family on the principal’s filing.

The CSPA calculation is the difference between a family case and two cases. A child’s “CSPA age” is their age when a visa number becomes available, minus the number of days the petition was pending, provided the family seeks permanent residence within one year of availability. On a 35-month I-526E, nearly three years can come off the child’s age — which is frequently the whole margin.

A Current lane protects children twice over. Filing in a lane that is Current means a visa is available at approval rather than years afterwards, so the child’s CSPA age is fixed at the earliest possible moment. Filing into a queue with a nine-year date exposes a child to the entire length of that queue, and no CSPA subtraction covers waiting for a priority date that has not yet arrived.

Regional-centre termination does not age children out. The rescue provision in 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(M) expressly prevents derivative age-out when a good-faith investor re-associates or reinvests within the 180-day window, which is one of the more valuable and least-discussed features of the statute.

Marriage ends derivative eligibility, and turning 21 without CSPA relief does too. A child who marries is no longer a qualifying derivative at any age. A child whose CSPA age still reaches 21 needs an independent immigration route — which, for a family filing when a child is 17 or 18, is a scenario to model at the outset rather than discover at the interview.

Why do EB-5 petitions get denied or draw a request for evidence?

Most EB-5 problems are evidentiary rather than substantive: the investment qualifies but the paperwork does not prove it. The recurring failure is lawful source of funds — the requirement to trace every dollar of the $800,000 or $1,050,000 from a lawful origin to the new commercial enterprise, with documents rather than assertions. USCIS does not publish current approval or denial rates, so no reliable percentage can be quoted.

Source of funds is a chain, and it breaks at the least documented link. Salary, business income, the sale of property or shares, an inheritance, a gift, or a loan secured by the investor’s own assets can all be lawful sources; each requires its own evidence — tax returns, audited accounts, sale contracts, bank records, and often an accountant’s or lawyer’s letter tying the transfers together. Cash that appears in an account without a documented origin is the most common single defect.

Gifted and borrowed funds are permitted but attract scrutiny. A gift needs the donor’s own source-of-funds evidence and a gift instrument; a loan generally needs to be secured by assets the investor owns, because unsecured debt against the enterprise itself has historically been treated as failing the at-risk requirement. Proceeds from cryptocurrency sales are workable where exchange records, wallet history, and tax reporting establish both acquisition and disposal.

Path-of-funds errors are separate from origin errors. Even a perfectly lawful source fails if the transfer route into the escrow or enterprise account is undocumented — third-party transfers, currency-control workarounds, and pooled family accounts each require their own explanation.

Project-level defects sink otherwise clean petitions. A business plan that is not comprehensive, an economic report whose job model does not survive scrutiny, or a change of project after filing can produce a denial that has nothing to do with the investor. The statutory rescue in 1153(b)(5)(M) covers regional-centre termination, not a badly modelled job count.

A request for evidence is a deadline, not a rejection. USCIS issues an RFE with a response window stated on the notice, and a complete, well-organised response is the normal outcome. The petition remains pending during that period, and the priority date is unaffected.

After a denial there are three routes and they are not equivalent. A motion to reopen or reconsider goes back to the office that decided, an appeal goes to the Administrative Appeals Office, and refiling starts a new petition with a new priority date. Where the original priority date has value — which, in a retrogressed category, is most of the case — preserving it through a motion or appeal rather than refiling is the decision that matters.

Sanctions screening runs in the background of every case. DHS must check petitioners and associated persons against the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals list before approving an EB-5 petition (8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(R)). Name-match issues are resolvable but slow, and they are worth anticipating where common names or previously sanctioned jurisdictions are involved.

What changes next for EB-5?

Four things are scheduled or pending as of 10 August 2026: the 30 September 2026 grandfathering cutoff, the 1 January 2027 inflation adjustment, a proposed EB-5 fee rule published 23 October 2025, and a comprehensive RIA implementation rule published 2 July 2026 whose comment period closes 31 August 2026. None of the three rulemakings is in force, and the litigation over the Gold Card is undecided.

The proposed fee rule would raise EB-5 filing fees substantially if finalised. DHS proposed an initial I-526/I-526E fee of $9,625, an I-526E amendment fee of $9,530, an I-829 fee of $7,860, and a new $8,000 Form I-527 for legacy I-526 amendments (90 FR 48516, 23 October 2025). One wrinkle is worth knowing: the proposal’s “current fee” column shows $11,160 because it was written before Moody v. Noem, so the percentage decreases it advertises no longer describe reality — against the fees actually in force, the proposal is an increase.

The RIA implementation rule is the first comprehensive rulemaking under the 2022 statute. Published 2 July 2026 under docket USCIS-2026-0100, it addresses programme integrity and the automatic revocation of petitions, and its comment period closes 31 August 2026 — which means anyone with a stake in the outcome can still file a comment as this page is published.

Reauthorisation is the question nobody can answer from a primary source. The regional-centre programme has lapsed and been revived before, most recently in the gap that preceded the 2022 Act. DHS’s own fee-rule analysis assumes reauthorisation, which is evidence of the agency’s planning assumption rather than of Congress’s intention. Filing before 30 September 2026 removes the question from your case; filing after it does not.

So is an EB-5 visa worth it in 2026?

EB-5 is worth it for an investor who wants US permanent residence for a family, can place $800,000 at genuine risk without needing it back on a schedule, and is prepared for a process measured in years rather than months. It is a poor fit for anyone who needs the capital returned by a certain date, expects an investment return, or wants a residence permit they can hold from abroad.

Three questions decide the case, in this order. First, which lane is open for your country of chargeability this month — because a closed lane makes every other question academic. Second, whether the capital is genuinely spare, because the at-risk requirement is real and the sustainment period is a floor rather than a schedule. Third, whether US worldwide taxation from the residency starting date, and the long-term-resident exit rules eight years later, are acceptable.

The strongest 2026 case is a set-aside filing by someone already in the United States. A lane that is Current permits concurrent filing of Form I-485, which produces work authorisation and a travel document years before the green card, and the rural lane carries a statutory processing priority on top. For an H-1B or F-1 holder from India or China, that combination is the difference the set-asides were created to make.

The weakest case is a passive investor buying speed. Nothing in the current data supports an expectation of speed: USCIS publishes 35 months for the I-526E, the I-956F stacks in front of it where the project is new, and no fee, lane, or programme buys a visa number that the annual limits have already allocated.

Compare it honestly against the alternatives before committing. EB-5 is the only programme in the investment-migration market that delivers US permanent residence, and it is also the only one that brings US worldwide taxation with it. Our golden visa countries guide sets the $800,000 threshold against the European and Caribbean field, and the citizenship by investment guide covers the programmes that end in a passport rather than a residence card. Passquire’s Golden Visa Report 2026 covers who is actually buying these programmes and why.

Sources

Statute and executive action

• 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5) (INA 203(b)(5)) — investment amounts, set-aside reserves, sustainment period, job creation, TEA designation, regional-centre termination and the 180-day rescue, grandfathering, sanctions screening. Govinfo, USCODE-2023-title8-chap12-subchapII-partI-sec1153. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title8/html/USCODE-2023-title8-chap12-subchapII-partI-sec1153.htm (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, Pub. L. 117-103, div. BB, §106(b) — adjudication goals, quoted verbatim in the DHS proposed rule at 90 FR 48520 (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• Executive Order 14351, “The Gold Card”, 19 September 2025, 90 FR 46031 (published 24 September 2025), FR Doc 2025-18602. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/24/2025-18602/the-gold-card (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• USCIS, agency information collection notice for Form I-140G, Immigrant Petition for the Gold Card Program, OMB 1615-0167 — 30-day notice 91 FR 32074 (29 May 2026); 60-day notice 91 FR 11559 (10 March 2026) (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• DHS, “USCIS Employment-Based Immigrant Visa, Fifth Preference (EB-5) Fee Rule”, proposed rule, 90 FR 48516, 23 October 2025, Docket USCIS-2025-0139 (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• DHS, “EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022; Ensuring the Integrity of the EB-5 Program; Automatic Revocation of Petitions for Immigrant Classification”, proposed rule, 2 July 2026, Docket USCIS-2026-0100, comments close 31 August 2026 (retrieved 10 August 2026)

Agency data

• US Department of State, Visa Bulletin for August 2026, Number 17, Volume XI — EB-5 final action dates and dates for filing by country and lane, EB-1 and EB-2 dates, set-aside percentages, worldwide employment-based level. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin.html (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• USCIS, Adjustment of Status Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin — confirmation that employment-based applicants use Final Action Dates for August 2026 (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• USCIS, Case Processing Times, Immigrant Investor Program Office — I-526E 35 months, I-526 34 months, I-829 23 months, I-956F 11.5 months, each at 80% of cases over the trailing six months; and the note that I-526E adjudication follows adjudication of the associated I-956F. https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/ (queried 10 August 2026)
• USCIS, Form G-1055 Fee Schedule, edition 05/29/26 — all filing fees quoted in this guide. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/g-1055.pdf (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• USCIS alert, “Court Order on Partial Stay of DHS 2024 USCIS Fee Rule”, 18 November 2025 — Moody v. Noem, No. 24-cv-00762-CNS (D. Colo.), decided 12 November 2025; fees reinstated 13 November 2025; rejection of filings paying the higher amounts from 26 November 2025. https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/court-order-on-partial-stay-of-dhs-2024-uscis-fee-rule (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• USCIS, EB-5 Questions and Answers — concurrent filing under INA 245(n), the infrastructure route being limited to regional centres, and no second Integrity Fund fee on an I-526E amendment. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-fifth-preference-eb-5/eb-5-questions-and-answers (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• USCIS, EB-5 Integrity Fund — $1,000 petition fee; $20,000 and $10,000 annual regional-centre fees; termination for non-payment. https://www.uscis.gov/eb-5-integrity-fund (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• USCIS, Approved EB-5 Immigrant Investor Regional Centers — 567 approved as of 11 May 2026; programme in effect through 30 September 2027; the agency’s disclaimer that approval is not endorsement; and its statement that it is reviewing inquiries about the previously posted I-526 and I-829 approval and denial statistics (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• USCIS, Regional Center Terminations and the published terminations file — 782 terminations all-time, 195 in calendar 2025, 37 in calendar 2026 to date. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/web-content/eb5rgnctrterminations.csv (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• trumpcard.gov — official Gold Card application site: $15,000 processing fee, $1 million gift, per-family-member fee and gift, corporate terms, the “lawful permanent resident status as an EB-1 or EB-2 visa holder” classification, the tax statement, the visa-availability warning, and the Platinum Card waitlist (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• CourtListener docket 1:26-cv-00300, American Association of University Professors v. Department of Homeland Security (D.D.C.), filed 3 February 2026, Judge Richard J. Leon; motion to dismiss 25 June 2026; opposition 3 August 2026 (retrieved 10 August 2026)

US tax

• IRS, Expatriation tax — IRC 877 and 877A, the $2,000,000 net-worth test, the certification test, and the $10,000 Form 8854 penalty. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/expatriation-tax (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• IRS, Residency starting and ending dates — the green-card test under IRC 7701(b) and the 8-of-15-year long-term-resident rule. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/residency-starting-and-ending-dates (retrieved 10 August 2026)
• IRS, Rev. Proc. 2025-32 §§4.37 and 4.38 — 2026 covered-expatriate income threshold $211,000 and net-gain exclusion $910,000. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-25-32.pdf (retrieved 10 August 2026)

Not published, and therefore not quoted here: current EB-5 approval and denial rates (withdrawn by USCIS pending review), the 1 January 2027 adjusted investment amounts (DHS has published no technical amendment), Gold Card application and approval volumes (no agency publication), and regional-centre administrative fees (private contractual amounts with no official schedule).