EB-5 Rural vs Urban: Green Card Investment in Rural and High-Unemployment Areas

September 17, 2024 · EB-5 · 7 min read

An EB-5 investment of US$800,000 is available where the project sits in a rural area or an area of high unemployment. The EB-5 rural vs urban question comes down to these two targeted employment area categories, and the article below will help investors understand the difference between them so they can make the best choice.

The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program gives foreign investors the opportunity to obtain a U.S. green card by investing in projects in the United States that create jobs for qualifying U.S. employees. Investors may invest a minimum of US$800,000 where the project sits in a rural area or an area of high unemployment. The article below will help investors understand the difference between these two categories so they can make the best choice.

How rural areas and high-unemployment areas are defined

Under the EB-5 program, a Targeted Employment Area (TEA) is an area in which an investor may invest a minimum of US$800,000 rather than the standard US$1,050,000.

TEAs fall into two categories: rural areas and areas of high unemployment.

• A rural area is defined as an area that is outside, and not adjacent to, a metropolitan statistical area or a city or town with a population of 20,000 or more, based on U.S. census data.
• A high unemployment area is one where the unemployment rate is at least 150% of the U.S. national average, and which the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security has designated as such. For example, if the national average unemployment rate is 8.0%, a qualifying area would show 12% or higher.

Beyond TEAs, the US$800,000 level also applies to qualifying infrastructure projects. A qualifying infrastructure project is a capital investment that helps maintain, improve, or build public works and is administered by a federal, state, or local government entity. In practice, few infrastructure projects reach the market; most offerings are rural or high-unemployment area projects.

Reserved visas and priority processing

Each year, roughly 10,000 EB-5 visas are allocated to immigrant investors, counting spouses and unmarried children under 21. Under the earlier rules, TEA projects received a 30% priority allocation shared between rural areas and areas of high unemployment. To encourage investment, the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA), enacted in March 2022, introduced reserved, or set-aside, visas for 3 project categories: 20% of the annual EB-5 visa quota is reserved for petitions investing in rural projects, 10% for petitions investing in high-unemployment area projects, and 2% for petitions investing in infrastructure projects.

Rural EB-5 projects also benefit from priority processing under the new rules. In practice this means Form I-526E — the petition a regional center investor files to establish EB-5 classification, and the first step toward a conditional green card — is adjudicated sooner, so the investor’s whole family may be able to move to the United States earlier. Cases observed recently suggest that EB-5 petitions tied to rural projects have often been approved within 12 months, while petitions tied to standard projects have taken around 3 years.

Rural EB-5 projects therefore carry the clearest set of procedural advantages, which is why they attract the larger share of EB-5 investors today. The other side of the trade-off deserves equal weight. Rural locations often present less favorable business conditions than established markets, and that bears directly on how quickly a project is completed and whether it creates enough qualifying jobs — the precondition for removing the conditions on a green card, which an investor does by filing Form I-829 after the 2-year conditional green card period.

Investing in a rural project therefore means accepting a higher degree of risk than other project types. An EB-5 investment must remain at risk under U.S. law, and neither an immigration outcome nor the return of capital can be promised. Look closely at the developer’s and the regional center’s capabilities and experience, and at the project’s feasibility and commercial prospects.

Work with an established immigration advisory firm as well — one with the experience to prepare a thorough, well-documented EB-5 petition and to support your case through to the final stage.