The United States has made major changes to the rules governing its EB-5 program through the enactment of the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA). The RIA was a component of H.R. 2471—the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022—which President Biden signed into law on March 15, 2022. And while the RIA made many sweeping changes to the EB-5 landscape, including establishing an EB-5 Integrity Fund comprised of annual funds collected from regional centers to support auditing and fraud detection operations, two changes in particular are pertinent to developers funding capital investments. First, the RIA altered how developers calculate EB-5 job creation. Second, the RIA prioritizes the processing and adjudication of EB-5 investment in rural area projects, and it tweaked the incentives for high unemployment area and infrastructure projects. Paying careful attention to each of these two areas will enable developers to maximize the benefits afforded to it through the changes enacted by the RIA.
THE RIA MODIFIES JOB CREATION CALCULATIONS
New commercial enterprises under the EB-5 program must create full-time employment for no fewer than 10 United States citizens, United States nationals, or foreign nationals who are either permanent residents or otherwise lawfully authorized for employment in the United States. The RIA made three major changes to how regional centers measure job creation to meet this 10-employee threshold:
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