An EB-5 regional center is an organization that is approved and regulated by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to sponsor U.S. projects and pool foreign EB-5 capital to invest in those projects in order to promote economic growth and job creation.

Behring Regional Center LLC was approved by USCIS in June 2014. Our Regional Center ID is ID1316551161.

Function of an EB-5 Regional Center

The EB-5 regional center is primarily responsible for maintaining compliance with USCIS EB-5 rules and regulations to ensure that its EB-5 investors qualify for a U.S. green card.

An EB-5 regional center’s responsibilities include:

1. Underwriting and structuring EB-5 projects that not only comply with USCIS rules, but also provide the highest likelihood of success for our investors to obtain a US green card and the return of their capital.
2. Drafting the investment securities documents, including the Private Placement Memorandum (PPM) as well as the transactional, corporate, securities and loan documents pertaining to the investment in a sponsored project.
3. Drafting a comprehensive business plan that complies with Matter of Ho case.
4. Drafting an economic report using reasonable methodologies to establish the number of indirect jobs created.
5. Filing the I-924 and I-924a forms with USCIS for project exemplar pre-approval and for annual reporting on project / job creation progress.
6. Providing EB-5 investors and their immigration attorneys with all project-related documents necessary to file the I-526 petition.
7. Providing EB-5 investors and their immigration attorneys with evidence of job creation to file the I-829 petition.
8. Tracking construction progress and job creation during the project.
9. Providing EB-5 investors with quarterly and annual reports on the progress and status of the EB-5 project and partnerships.
10. Administering and tracking the deployment of the EB-5 capital and return to EB-5 investors upon completion of the conditional residency period and investment term.

History and Formation

Congress established the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program in 1992 to allow foreign investors to immigrate to the United States upon investing into a new commercial enterprise and successfully creating 10 full-time jobs for US workers.

To be designated as an approved EB-5 regional center, the organization must file Form I-924 with USCIS. Upon approval, USCIS grants the regional center a license to raise and invest capital in projects in a specific geographic area and in specific industries.

Regional centers may also submit an I-526 exemplar to seek USCIS pre-approval of the business plan and economic methodology to model indirect job creation of a particular “shovel-ready” project. Upon an I-924 / I-526 exemplar approval, USCIS deems that the project is reasonably likely to create the jobs and will defer to its preapproval in subsequent I-526 petitions filed by EB-5 investors.

Advantages of an EB-5 Investment through an EB-5 Regional Center

The main advantage of investing through an EB-5 regional center is that USCIS allows the EB-5 project to count indirect and induced jobs as well as direct jobs to determine the amount of job creation. Using economic models approved by USCIS, the regional centers can determine the number of indirect jobs based on the construction expenditures and operations revenue of a project. This is an easier and more reliable method of satisfying the job creation requirement for a green card than maintaining direct jobs (i.e. W-2 employees) for 2.5 years.

The EB-5 regional center program is more popular than a direct EB-5 investment, too, because the EB-5 investor need not be involved in the day-to-day management of the business. Instead, it is a more passive investment where the EB-5 investor is a limited partner of a limited partnership or a member of a limited liability company. Moreover, by not being tied directly to managing the business, the EB-5 investor is free to live, work or study anywhere in the United States. The EB-5 investor is not limited to the location of the EB-5 regional center or project.