Speaker 1: Hey everybody, U.S. immigration lawyer Michael Ashoori here, and in today's video I'm going to share with you the EB-5 visa process. So EB-5 is a complex area of immigration law, and it's basically a program where somebody can get a green card for themselves and their spouse and their unmarried children under 21 years old based on making an investment in a U.S. business and creating jobs for U.S. workers. Now there's oftentimes quite a bit of confusion surrounding the process of getting an EB-5 visa, so that's what I want to clarify and clear up in today's video. Without further introduction, let's jump right in. The first thing about getting an EB-5 visa, and the first place you want to start is by consulting with an EB-5 lawyer. And the reason why I say this is that there are many ways to get a green card to the United States. You can get a green card potentially through some sort of a familial relationship with a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident. For example, if you're married to a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident, or if your child is a U.S. citizen and your parent or so on, that's just in terms of family options to get a green card. There are ways to get a green card through having an employer sponsor you by giving you a full-time job offer, and there's various other avenues to get a green card. So the reason why you want to start by consulting with an EB-5 lawyer is so that you can determine whether EB-5 is the best option for you. By consulting with the lawyer, you might find out that there's another option that makes more sense for you. So you want to start by consulting with a qualified EB-5 lawyer. Now after that's done, and you've determined that EB-5 is the correct option for you, the next step is to select a business to invest in. Now as it pertains to EB-5, there are multiple options in terms of where you can make your investment. You could potentially start a brand new company, you could potentially invest in an already existing company, or you could invest in a regional center project. Regional centers are basically these entities that are certified by USCIS to sponsor various EB-5 projects. And the purpose of this video is not to cover all the different types of investments that one can make, but for purposes of this video, I want you to know that at this stage, you want to select what type of business or project you want to invest in. And that's step two. Now after that, once you've determined specifically what you want to invest in, the next step is to make the investment. As part of the EB-5 process, as part of the EB-5 requirements, your investment funds need to be at risk. So before we can move on to the next step, the key is to make sure that you have placed your investment funds at risk. So again, once that's done, we move on to step four, which is to file your Form I-526. Now the Form I-526 is the petition that you file with USCIS to determine that you've satisfied all the EB-5 requirements. Now, I don't want to devalue the importance of this step at stage number four, because the Form I-526 is a very intensive application. And I'm not just talking about the form that gets filled out, but oftentimes the documentation that accompanies a Form I-526 is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages long. We have a business plan that gets included. We include proof of the source of your investment funds, the path of those funds from the time that they were originally obtained until the time that they were placed at risk. There's documentation pertaining to the EB-5 investor, their passport, and tons of documentation accompanies the Form I-526 at step number four. Now the Form I-526 can take several months to process, oftentimes well over a year to process the Form I-526. So the reason I mentioned this is because I want to mention something that's very interesting about step number five. So as I mentioned, at step number four, you file the Form I-526. At step number five, you file either an adjustment of status or consular processing. Now the Form I-526 by itself doesn't give you immediate immigration benefits. It doesn't give you the ability to live in the United States or to work in the United States. Basically what the Form I-526 does is it demonstrates that you satisfy the EB-5 requirements. But in addition to getting the Form I-526 approved, you need to either file an adjustment of status or you need to go through consular processing, which is also called immigrant visa processing. Now an adjustment of status is for somebody that's lawfully present in the United States in some sort of a non-immigrant status. Let's say somebody's in the United States on an H-1B visa. Those are examples of a valid non-immigrant status that someone can be in to do an adjustment of status. And what an adjustment of status is, like it sounds, it's when somebody adjusts from the non-immigrant status that they are in to lawful permanent resident status. In order to do an adjustment of status, somebody files a Form I-485 with USCIS. Alternatively, if somebody is outside of the United States, if they're not in the United States, then they'll typically do consular processing, also referred to as immigrant visa processing. And this is basically where you apply for your immigrant visa outside of the United States. And at the appropriate time, you go in for your immigrant visa interview. And upon successful completion of that interview, you would get a immigrant visa stamped into your passport. And once you enter the United States using that immigrant visa, you would be classified as a lawful permanent resident. With the adjustment of status, once the adjustment of status was approved, you would typically get a green card issued to you in the mail. Now, here's where it gets interesting. In order to do either an adjustment of status or consular processing, a visa number has to be available to you. That's a product for a longer discussion. But basically, what it means is that depending on your country of birth, there might be a wait list, essentially, before you can qualify to apply for your immigrant visa or your adjustment of status. So in order to do an adjustment of status for consular processing, a visa number must be available to you, which basically means that there is either no visa backlog, or if there is a visa backlog, it's now your place in line to apply for that visa or the adjustment of status. So what I want to mention is that historically, for somebody that was applying for an EB-5 visa, they first had to get their form I-526 approved, and only then could they file either the adjustment of status or consular processing. But in light of recent changes that have just taken place within approximately the last year or two years, somebody can now concurrently file their form I-526 along with their adjustment of status. This doesn't apply to consular processing, but if somebody is lawfully present in the United States in some sort of a non-immigrant status, and there is a visa number available for them, their priority date is current, then they can concurrently file their form I-526 along with their adjustment of status. And you might be wondering, what does concurrent filing mean? It means that you can file both applications at the same time. Now, this is wonderful news, because as I mentioned earlier, the form I-526 can oftentimes take well over a year to process. And based on the old model of how the EB-5 process worked, someone would have to wait that entire time for the form I-526 to process before they could file their adjustment of status application. But now, due to these changes, somebody can concurrently file their form I-526 along with their adjustment of status, meaning they can file both applications at the same time. And the reason why this is such a tremendous benefit is that even though the I-526 will be pending for a very long time, the applicants for the adjustment of status will still oftentimes get their employment authorization document, their EAD card, along with their travel permission, their advanced parole, after roughly six to eight months from filing their adjustment of status application, even though their form I-526 is still pending. Now, you're going to need to discuss with a qualified immigration lawyer whether you can travel using that advanced parole document. So this is just to give you some general information, but I do want to state how much of a tremendous benefit it is that now somebody, assuming that a visa number is currently available to them and assuming they qualify otherwise for an adjustment of status, that they can concurrently file the form I-526 along with the adjustment of status application. Enough of that, let's move on to the next point that I want to mention. After step five, the next step, so to speak, is step six, which is the two-year period of conditional permanent residence. When you do your adjustment of status and you get your adjustment of status approved or you do your consular processing and you get your immigrant visa, you are now considered a conditional lawful permanent resident. So what that means is essentially that the green card that you receive through the EB-5 process is initially valid for a two-year period. Basically, there's an expiration date on that green card for two years from when it is issued. Now, what needs to take place during this two-year period of conditional permanent residence so that you can remove the condition from your green card to become an unconditional lawful permanent resident? Well, basically, during this two-year period of conditional permanent residence, you need to maintain your investment, you need to keep your investment funds invested, and in addition to that, you need to create the 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers. Without going into all the specifics of all the details of the EB-5 requirements, there is a requirement in addition to making your investment to create jobs for U.S. workers, specifically 10 full-time jobs. Now, there's a lot more details that I can share about the job creation requirement, but the important thing that I want to share with you in today's video is that the 10 jobs need to be created during this two-year period of conditional permanent residence. A lot of people think, oh wow, I have to create all 10 jobs up here when I make my investment before I file my Form I-526, and that stresses a lot of people out to think that not only do they have to make an investment, but they have to create 10 jobs. Imagine how challenging that would sound for a brand new startup company to have the challenge of investing all this money and immediately creating 10 full-time jobs. That would be a daunting task, but that's not the way the EB-5 program works. You do not have to create the 10 jobs when the Form I-526 is filed. You do not have to create the 10 jobs at the time the adjustment of status is filed or approved, or the consular processing application is filed or approved. You have to create the 10 full-time jobs during the two-year period of conditional permanent residence. If you think about it, you have this process here of filing the Form I-526. That application will oftentimes, as we mentioned, take a long time to process. Then after your adjustment of status application is approved or your consular processing is approved and you get your immigrant visa, you have this two-year window during which you have to keep your funds invested as we discussed, and you have to create those 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers. Once that is done, approximately three months before your two-year conditional permanent residence expires, you can file your Form I-829, which is step seven. The Form I-829 is the application to remove the condition from your green card to become an unconditional lawful permanent resident. Again, that's done by filing the Form I-829. Now at the time the Form I-829 is filed, it's at this stage where you demonstrate that the job creation requirement has been satisfied and that you have maintained your investment, among other things that are demonstrated in this application. Now those are the first seven steps to the EB-5 process. As a bonus step, I've added step number eight, which is naturalization. Naturalization is the process of becoming a U.S. citizen. The EB-5 process, once it's completed, ultimately results in lawful permanent residence, which is a green card. Again, that's the end result. If all the steps are done properly, if all the requirements are met, and if the application is filed successfully, the end result should be lawful permanent residence, which is a green card. After a certain period of being a lawful permanent resident, you may potentially qualify to apply to naturalize to become a U.S. citizen. Now there are various requirements to qualify for naturalization, and we have videos on our channel about that, but I just wanted to put that here as well to basically close the loop. For those that are interested in citizenship, you should know that once the EB-5 process is done successfully, after a certain period of time, you may be eligible to naturalize to become a U.S. citizen. So there you have it. That's the EB-5 process. I want to mention once again that the EB-5 process is highly complex. It's so complex that most immigration lawyers do not do EB-5. While I've gone over some of the highlights of the EB-5 process, I want you to know that there are so many details to the EB-5 process, so it's very important to consult with an immigration lawyer so that they can evaluate the specifics of your particular case. This is not legal advice. This is just some general information for you, but I do hope that you found this information helpful. I hope that this helps to clarify any confusion that you might have or any questions that you might have. If you know anybody that could benefit from this information, please feel free to share this video with them. As always, thank you so much for tuning into this video, and I'll see you on the next one.