IN THIS GUIDE · Distinguish an approved credit facility from money actually contributed to EB-5
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Read availability conditions before relying on the limit
Identify the actual lender, borrower, approved limit and outstanding conditions to draw. A facility may be available in principle while a particular disbursement still requires steps. Do not represent undrawn credit as a completed cash contribution. Ask the lender to list the conditions precedent still outstanding and to say in writing which of them the borrower controls. A condition the borrower cannot satisfy alone is not a delay; it is a possibility, and the file should describe it as one.
Connect the draw to the investment path
Keep the loan and actual disbursement evidence, repayment obligations and relevant source information. Follow the funds to the qualifying arrangement. The borrowed origin should be described honestly and assessed under the applicable EB-5 rules, without importing another visa category’s blanket financing exclusions. Borrowed funds must be loaned in good faith and not used to evade the restrictions on permissible sources. For a non-bank lender, the statute also requires applicable source records from the lender. Keep the loan agreement and the security documents together, because the security is what determines how the borrowed funds are treated. Note which assets are pledged and to whom, and obtain the registration particulars rather than relying on a clause describing an intention to register.
Establish the whole EB-5 case
Current general thresholds are US$1.05 million or US$800,000 for a qualifying targeted-employment-area or infrastructure case, with statutory adjustments beginning January 1, 2027 under applicable filing-date rules. Establish lawful source and path, at-risk capital, ten qualifying full-time jobs per investor and management or policy participation. Neither lender approval nor a large borrowing limit proves those immigration elements. Each element needs its own evidence folder rather than a shared narrative: lawful source, the path the funds travelled, capital placed at risk, the ten qualifying full-time positions, and the investor's participation in management or policy. When one folder is empty, that is the element to work on, and a longer summary of the others will not fill it.
Coordinate debt obligations with uncertain immigration timing
Review the actual repayment schedule independently of hoped-for project distributions or a visa decision. Conditional residence starts with applicable immigrant admission or adjustment approval; I-829 is generally filed in the 90 days before its second anniversary. Neither that filing nor petition approval automatically pays the loan or returns invested capital. Write the repayment dates and the immigration milestones on the same sheet, in two columns, and look for the months where a payment falls due with no expected event beside it. Those months are the household's actual exposure, and they need a funding answer that does not rely on an approval nobody can schedule.
The document that proves the money arrived, and the one that only promises it
Two documents in this kind of file look similar and do entirely different work. The facility letter or credit approval describes what a lender is willing to do; the drawdown advice, together with the transfer confirmation and the enterprise's own bank statement showing the credit, describes what happened. Only the second set establishes that capital reached the new commercial enterprise. Build the file around that second set and treat the first as background. A weak version of the evidence is a single consolidated statement covering a long period, in which the relevant credit appears as one line among hundreds: technically responsive, practically unreadable. Ask instead for the transaction advice for each individual movement, each showing the payer, the payee, the date and the reference, and keep them in the order the money travelled. Where a non-bank lender is involved, that lender's own source records are required as well, so ask for them at the same time rather than in a second round. Hypothetical example: the sale of a tooling and metal-fabrication business funds a contribution, and the bill of sale rather than the deposit slip is what establishes the origin.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.