EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022: What Changed and Why It Matters

The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA) is the most significant legislative overhaul in the program's 32-year history. Enacted on March 15, 2022, it permanently codified the Regional Center Program, raised investment thresholds, created set-aside visa categories, and introduced a set of integrity requirements designed to eliminate the fraud that had plagued the pre-RIA program. If your research into EB-5 is based on materials from before mid-2022, you are working from an outdated rulebook.

The Core Changes You Need to Understand

New Investment Thresholds

Pre-RIA: $1,000,000 standard / $500,000 TEA Post-RIA: $1,050,000 standard / $800,000 TEA (rural, high-unemployment, or infrastructure)

The RIA also introduced automatic inflation adjustments every five years, meaning the thresholds will increase periodically going forward. The next adjustment is approaching.

Set-Aside Visa Categories

This is the RIA's most strategically significant structural change. Each year, the RIA reserves specific portions of EB-5 visa allocations:

• 20% for rural investments (outside Metro Statistical Areas, outside cities of 20,000+)
• 10% for high-unemployment area investments (unemployment at 150%+ of national average)
• 2% for infrastructure projects (government-administered public works)

These set-asides create completely separate visa queues from the unreserved pool. The practical consequence: investors from countries with severe unreserved backlogs — mainland China and India — can bypass multi-decade queues by investing in set-aside projects. As of the May 2026 Visa Bulletin, all three set-aside categories show "Current" for all countries. A Chinese national investing in a rural project faces no backlog; the same investor in an unreserved urban project faces a Final Action Date of September 22, 2016.

Unused set-aside visas carry over within the same category to the following fiscal year before rolling into the unreserved pool in the third year.

The End of Pooled Direct Investments

Pre-RIA, investors could pool capital directly in a standalone business without going through a Regional Center. The RIA prohibited pooled direct investments for petitions filed on or after March 15, 2022. If you want to pool capital with other EB-5 investors today, you must use the Regional Center structure. Solo direct investments — where a single investor funds their own business — remain permitted.

The New Forms

The RIA introduced Form I-526E for Regional Center investor petitions, replacing the legacy I-526. It also created Form I-956F — the project application that Regional Centers must file before investors can complete their individual petitions. Understanding the I-956F requirement is critical because USCIS will not adjudicate an investor's I-526E until the underlying I-956F has been determined.

The Grandfathering Provision and Its September 30, 2026 Sunset

The RIA created a statutory grandfathering protection for investors who file before a specific deadline. Petitions properly filed on or before September 30, 2026, are protected: USCIS must continue processing and adjudicating the petition under the existing statute even if the Regional Center Program subsequently expires, lapses, or is materially altered.

This matters because the Regional Center Program itself is authorized only through September 30, 2027. There is a history of EB-5 program lapses — Congress has allowed the authorization to expire before, creating limbo for investors mid-process.

The grandfathering deadline is September 30, 2026 — one full year before the authorization expires. This is the filing deadline that locks in statutory protection, not the authorization expiration.

What happens if you file after September 30, 2026?

Your petition receives no grandfathering protection. If the Regional Center Program lapses or is restructured after that date, your petition may be affected. You also face exposure to potential investment threshold increases that may accompany any future reauthorization.

Practical timeline pressure: Assembling source of funds documentation typically takes three to six months. Selecting a project and completing due diligence takes additional weeks to months. Investors who have not already started this process are in the final window to act.

The Integrity Measures

The RIA introduced a comprehensive integrity framework designed to address the fraud that characterized the pre-RIA program:

Mandatory independent fund administration: EB-5 capital must be monitored by a third-party administrator — a licensed CPA, attorney, or broker-dealer with no affiliation to the NCE or Regional Center. This administrator controls escrow release, monitors capital deployment, and provides investor-facing transparency through oversight portals. The commingling and misappropriation patterns seen in Jay Peak and similar cases are now structurally prohibited.

USCIS audits every five years: Regional Centers submit to compliance audits every five years covering job creation, recordkeeping, and operational integrity.

Annual $20,000 Integrity Fund fee: Each Regional Center pays $20,000 annually to an EB-5 Integrity Fund that finances USCIS fraud detection and oversight activities.

Subparagraph M (good-faith investor protections): If a Regional Center is debarred or a project NCE is terminated, USCIS issues a 180-day notice. Good-faith investors can associate their petition with a new compliant Regional Center or NCE, retaining their original priority date and CSPA protections.

Restricted TEA designations: The RIA removed state authority to designate high-unemployment TEAs. Pre-RIA, states could gerrymander contiguous census tracts to make urban luxury hotel projects qualify for the $500,000 reduced threshold. Post-RIA, USCIS controls all high-unemployment designations using a more restricted census methodology.

The Two-Year Sustainment Period

Pre-RIA regulations required capital to remain at risk throughout the entire conditional permanent residency period — often five to seven years. The RIA, through subsequent USCIS guidance issued in October 2023, changed this.

For post-RIA investors, capital must remain at risk for a minimum of two years from the date it is fully deployed to the job-creating enterprise. After that two-year period, if jobs are verified, the capital can be returned — even before the investor has received the unconditional green card or filed the I-829. This interpretation survived a federal court challenge in July 2025.

Pre-RIA vs. Post-RIA: A Clear Demarcation

The dividing line is March 15, 2022 — the RIA's enactment date.

Pre-RIA investors (Form I-526 filed before March 15, 2022) remain under legacy rules: lower thresholds ($500,000 TEA), legacy processing procedures, no access to the new set-aside categories, and the extended sustainment period linked to the conditional residency timeline.

Post-RIA investors (Form I-526E filed on or after March 15, 2022) are subject to the new thresholds, the mandatory integrity fees, the new forms (I-526E, I-956F), and the two-year sustainment standard.

Navigating the post-RIA program requires understanding these structural changes in detail — not just the headline investment minimums, but the visa queue mathematics, the grandfathering deadlines, and the due diligence framework the new integrity rules created. The US EB-5 Investor Visa Guide is built around the post-RIA framework and walks through every stage of the process under the current rules.