My business is such that I would need contracted employees and not direct employees. My employees would be people being paid salary by their employers, whom I would have contact with, but they would work exclusively for my company. For proof of this arrangement, I can present my contract with these companies, salary slips of the employees, and a letter from the contract companies stating that these people work exclusively and full-time on my projects. What else will I need to make this work for EB-5?
Under direct investment, the jobs will not be counted unless the employees are directly employed by the new commercial enterprise. However, indirect jobs may be counted toward the job creation requirements through a regional center investment
If your plan is to directly manage the business, then you must create a minimum of ten jobs, and they must be full-time jobs, not temporary; but, it appears there are other options besides the EB-5 program. On the one hand, in a contractual situation as described, these are not your employees. They would be sent to you as contractors. This practice is common in the IT and healthcare industries. It is likely your business is essentially an independent contracting business utilizing various temporary workers on temporary contracts that may last anywhere between one and three years per term, and even the contracts may be renewable. However, a lot of this type of business arrangement is not easily amenable for EB-5 rather, as of now, those businesses are better served and dominated by the H-1B visa program. On the other hand, rather than a directly managed business, consider turning this idea to a regional center, where your investment plan and the employees in question can be treated as indirect employees. Advisably, talk to an EB-5 attorney before proceeding further, as your idea needs to be fleshed out to make it a workable EB-5 project.
This "indirect" employment complicated the nature of permanent placement. I would have to see the engagement placement contract.
To count these independent contractor jobs, you may structure your business as an EB-5 Regional Center project. On this basis, indirect jobs may be calculated to show the required jobs have been created.
If you are in the regional center context, these would be considered indirect employees. If you are in a direct context, not having these employees on your payroll would be quite the hurdle. The control of these "employees" could be used, but we would need to review the arrangement fully.
This arrangement will not work for a direct EB-5; maybe it would work for a regional center indirect job creation. For direct EB-5s, the 10 employees must be employed by the new commercial enterprise.
