I aim to start an EB-5 project but the timeline shows that I will have 10 American employees only at 24 month after starting the company. It is because we will expand 16 months to design new products for the American market and more than 7 months to ramp up production. Is there some maximum time to reach 10 American employees in the EB-5 project?
You have 2 years of the conditional residency period to create the jobs. If the business gets started and operational upon filing the I-526, most jobs can be created in the 2-4 years of processing of that form, and then the 2 years of conditional residency is there to maintain those positions.
The 10 direct jobs should be created within the first 2 years.
The reality is that you do not need to show the 10 employees until 3-4 years after you start.
Ideally, you would file I-829 with evidence of 10 employees. So that is your timeline - I-829 filing.
In general, it is a reasonable period of time, which is usually within 2.5 years of I-526 approval. In reality, you have some wiggle room depending on your facts and situation.
The job creation has to be realistic based on the business plan. USCIS appears however to be taking over 2 years to get to the petitions, and at that time, they usually issue a request for an update to determine how many jobs have been created.
