What documents are necessary from the EB-5 regional center?

You need to contact an EB-5 attorney for a consultation, where they can review your goals and business activities, as well as determine what would be the best course of action to prepare an approval application for regional center designation.

In this circumstance, you must ask any regional center you contact to include the operating agreement and all related materials for the EB-5 program. Do not focus on a checklist of documents that you think the USCIS may want; rather, ask for all information related to the EB-5. It is advisable that you seek the counsel of an EB-5 attorney to assist on this issue.

You should perform your own due diligence on a prospective regional center and obtain the assistance of a professional once you get to the stage when you are considering an actual project. You should perform basic searches for litigation histories, criminal records and regulatory matters. You should understand what businesses the principals have run in the past and how those ventures have gone. In that regard, checking out all of the corporate history of the principals of the regional center and the regional center itself is key. You will want to know what professionals the regional center has employed for legal and accounting matters, as well as the business plan writer/economist. You will want client references and you may wish to contact one or two of the vendors with whom the regional center works (a construction contractor, etc.) to more fully understand the bona fides of the prospective regional center. Of course, you will want to confirm that the regional center actually is one, so you will have to obtain that documentation from the regional center directly. Your immigration attorney can and should assist you with gathering the documentation needed to submit your application. You should not try to do this yourself. The regional center will work closely with your attorney at this stage of the process.

Your question is whether or not a particular regional center is legitimate and trustworthy. In terms of the documentation, you can go on-line and request documents regarding the history of the regional center, the period of time it has been in existence, the number of job creating projects that they have sponsored, the number of I-526 petitions that have been approved and the number of I-829 petitions to remove conditional status that have been approved. More important, you should have experienced legal representation that should be familiar with reputable regional centers. You can do your research online and there is no reason why you cannot also meet in person with senior level representatives of both the regional center and the job creating entity.

You should enquire regarding the performance track record of the regional center's projects, how many EB-5 petitions/I-829s were filed/approved, and financing information. There are numerous documents you will need from the regional center to meet the EB-5 filing burden of proof, including the regional center designation approval notice issued by USCIS, offering memorandum, project corporate documentation, business plan, economic impact report, etc.

While the regional center must provide proof of its status, the important documents tend to come from the New Commercial Enterprise and the Job Creating Entries, which affiliate with the regional center and they are the entities that have most of the documentation. In a nutshell, you need to have the economic report and the business plan and the securities documents, but there is much more.