IN THIS GUIDE · Job counting when the plan is to employ family members
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Qualifying workers are defined by who they are, not by the work
The requirement is ten full-time positions for qualifying United States workers, and the investor and the investor's spouse, sons and daughters do not count toward that number. Nor do nonimmigrants in general. For a family business plan that assumes relatives will fill the senior roles, this can quietly remove several positions from the count before hiring even begins. The first correction is arithmetic: list every intended position, mark which would be filled by family members, and see how many countable positions remain of the ten. Build the source-and-path chronology before choosing a project. Records should connect the original lawful source, each intervening transaction and the final investment, because a missing early link is rarely cured by a later balance statement.
Full-time has a specific meaning and seasonal work needs care
The positions must be full-time, and a nursery's seasonal pattern makes that worth examining closely rather than assuming. Part-time roles do not simply add up to full-time ones by arithmetic convenience, and an operation whose staffing peaks for part of the year and falls away for the rest has to be able to show genuine full-time positions. That is a question about how the business is actually structured — permanent crews, year-round production, off-season work — and it is better designed into the plan than discovered when the record has to be produced. Job evidence should be tested against the project structure. Direct employment records, economic methodology and the treatment of related persons serve different purposes, so the investor should know which evidence the chosen model will ultimately require.
The rest of the framework applies in full
The current capital requirement is $1,050,000, or $800,000 for an investment in a targeted employment area or infrastructure project. The lawful source and path of funds must be documented, and the investor must be engaged in management or policy formulation. Approval leads to two years of conditional permanent residence, with Form I-829 filed in the 90 days before the second anniversary to remove the conditions and show that the applicable investment and job requirements were met. A project offering document is not a substitute for independent review of the commercial risk. The questions are where capital sits, how it may be deployed, what fees are separate, and what could happen if operating assumptions change.
Design the business so the evidence exists later
The two-year conditional period ends with a filing that has to prove what happened, so the record-keeping matters from the first day of operations. Payroll registers, employment agreements, tax filings and organizational records are what demonstrate the positions existed and were full-time. A family business that pays relatives informally, or that treats staffing flexibly, will struggle to produce that record even if the jobs were genuinely created. Setting up proper payroll and personnel administration at the outset is not bureaucratic caution here; it is the evidence. The later conditional-residence stage should influence the first filing. Preserve transfer records, project reports and job evidence from the outset, because the later petition asks whether the capital and employment commitments were met.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.