IN THIS GUIDE · Keep the EB-5 residence timeline separate from a Canadian tax-residency conclusion
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Give each adviser the actual chronology
Record the investment, petition and proposed travel milestones accurately alongside actual household changes. The tax analysis and immigration analysis may need some of the same facts for different purposes. Do not make one file’s date artificially match the other simply for convenience. Build the chronology from source documents: signed subscription or purchase materials, transfer confirmations, petition filings, admission records, and actual housing changes. Mark estimates as estimates. The useful decision is not whether all dates look consistent, but whether each filing says only what its own evidence supports.
Describe continuing ties rather than deciding their effect yourself
Identify the actual home and household arrangements and relevant changes for qualified tax review. CRA describes residence as a case-by-case inquiry with significant residential ties and possible treaty considerations. A U.S. immigration approval alone does not answer that inquiry, and this page does not conclude that retaining or changing one tie settles the result. Keep a factual residential-ties inventory for qualified Canadian tax advice: homes, spouse and children, possessions, banking, work, and the dates they actually change. That inventory is not a self-assessment of a tax result. It is the record that allows the tax adviser to analyze the relevant rules without borrowing conclusions from the immigration file.
Retain the EB-5 investment requirements
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. Tax planning does not waive or establish those immigration elements. For the immigration case, capital must remain exposed to investment risk, and the project must support ten qualifying full-time jobs for each investor. Lawful source and path records, the qualifying investment, and the job evidence answer different questions and should be reviewed in that order. A payment that is easy to trace still does not establish the required employment outcome.
Track conditional residence from the actual immigration event
Applicable immigrant admission or adjustment approval begins conditional residence; petition approval, a tax filing or a moving invoice does not. I-829 is generally filed in the 90 days before its second anniversary. Coordinate advice about any interaction between plans without treating an intended tax outcome as permission to ignore immigration requirements. Conditional permanent residence begins from the qualifying admission or adjustment event, not from planning conversations. Keep the approval, admission, and later removal-of-conditions records in one calendar with their actual dates. The conditional-residence period and the required I-829 filing window should be monitored from the governing event, while tax conclusions remain for the appropriate adviser.
What a regional center designation is, and is not
For a direct EB-5 investment outside a regional center, the enterprise must create at least ten full-time positions for qualifying U.S. workers, each of at least thirty-five hours per week, on the enterprise’s own payroll. A regional center's designation is a status held by the center; it is not an endorsement of any offering and not a guarantee that a petition will be approved.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.