How Jobs Need to be Created and for How Long?
USCIS, in a 2015 policy memo, explained the requirement for job creation must show that “the commercial enterprise created or can be expected to create, within a reasonable time, ten full-time jobs for qualifying employees.”
While the general expectation in the EB-5 industry is that jobs should be created within two years of the start of an investor’s conditional permanent residency, USCIS in the same memo offered further clarity that a “reasonable period of time” may last one year beyond the end of two-year conditional permanent residency.
Further, while the industry expectation is that jobs last two years, veteran immigration lawyer Robert Divine clarifies that jobs do not have to strictly last two years if the intention was that they do but, for some reason, this did not happen: “Rather, the job creation requirement is met if the partitioner can show that at least 10 full-time jobs for qualified employees were created by the new commercial enterprise as a result of this investment, and such jobs were considered to be permanent jobs when created.”
