I am planning to invest in an EB-5 regional center project. I understand that I need to have the required amount ready and deposit to the escrow account before I can file the I-526 application. I am wondering how to schedule my deposits if I am not able to deposit all of them all at once?
You may make multiple transfers to the escrow account but you will not be subscribed as limited partner until you are fully invested generally. You will need to discuss this with your regional center project. You should ensure that you document all transfers. Your immigration attorney should be able to assist you with that.
That is something you can work with the regional center. There is no regulation on that regard. However, the full amount of the investment should be deposited into the escrow account before you file the form I-526 Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneur.
The EB-5 Immigration attorney, EB-5 Regional Center, and the escrow agent can coordinate the transfer and deposit of your personal funds into the escrow account.
The EB-5 investment should be made before filing the I-526 petition. However, there is no additional requirement of the timing of multiple deposits in the escrow account of the EB-5 project.
You can make more than one deposit to the escrow account. However, your entire investment of $500,000 and the Regional Center Administration Fee must be paid before your I-526 EB-5 application can be filed with USCIS.
That would depend on your agreement with the Regional Center and your timeline, since you can not file the I-526 Petition for Alien Investor until the full minimum capital investment has been made (as one of the requirements).
The regional center you are working with should be in a better position to work with you on how the deposit should be done. Also, if the deposit will involve international transfers, consult the financial institution you plan to use on how to comply with foreign exchange transfer laws of your country. For instance, some countries have strict regulation on how much can be sent out of the country for each transaction or per month or even for an entire year. All these factors from the regional center agreement to banking regulation of your country are likely to affect how you schedule your deposits and whether you can even deposit at once or incrementally.
How you schedule the deposit would be up to you. You could take as little or as much time as you wish, but it is not until you accumulate the minimum investment amount that you will be eligible to file the EB-5 Investor Petition on Form I-526. Furthermore, unfortunately it is very likely that in the very near future the minimum $500,000 investment amount will be approximately doubled to either $925,000 or $1,250,000 depending upon whether or not the project is located in a Targeted Economic Area (TEA). This legislation could pass within the next several months if not sooner. m
All monies need to be invested in the project prior to filing the I-526.
You can deposit the funds in your escrow account as permitted by the EB-5 project that you select. As long as all of the funds are made available to the new commercial enterprise that is invested in by the time of filing the I-526 petition, the number of deposits should not matter.
There are ways to schedule the deposits so that you do not have to deposit all at once. The ways will depend on your source of funds. You will need to consult with an immigration lawyer, and go over your source of funds in detail so that the attorney can better advise you on how to deposit the funds into the escrow.
Depending upon the regional center, you should be able to make more than one transfer into the escrow account. You should let them know how and when you plan to transfer the funds so they can keep the appropriate records and give the bank/escrow agent notice that you will be making multiple transfers.
There is no requirement that the entire investment amount must be invested in one transaction and it is possible to use a number of separate transactions from different sources. The EB-5 Regulations require that the investor must have invested or "the investor must be in the process of investing". However, in practice, most regional center projects require that the full amount is invested prior to the filing of an I-526 Petition.
That may be up to the regional center. Most regional center would prefer to have the full investment amount wired at once; this would also make the tracking of the path of funds easier. If you must wire in two or more stages, I would not think any regional center would give you too much time in between.
