The EB-5 Document Checklist: What to Gather Before You Spend a Dollar

Short answer. An EB-5 petition is a documentary case. Nobody testifies. An officer reads a record and decides whether your claim is probably true. Below is every exhibit, in the order the file is actually built.

Get the source of funds tracker.

A one-page working document: every exhibit a source of funds file needs, with columns for who holds it, when you asked, when it arrived, and whether it has been translated. It is the sheet we work from, and it is the one clients actually use.

Two rules run through all of it

Everything in a foreign language needs a certified translation. Full document, separate signed certification, translator attesting to competence. The rule is at EB-5 Source of Funds.

Every document should exist because it answers a question an officer will ask, not because it was in a template. You must prove eligibility by a preponderance of the evidence, and the standard turns on quality rather than quantity. Four hundred pages of bank statements with no narrative connecting them is quantity. A forty-page trace with a cover memo explaining each transfer, cross-referenced to exhibits, is quality.

And one rule that decides why this is a pre-filing list. Under Matter of Izummi, 22 I&N Dec. 169 (AAO 1998), a petitioner must establish eligibility at the time of filing, and a petition “cannot be approved at a future date after the petitioner becomes eligible under a new set of facts.” A petitioner also “may not make material changes to a petition that has already been filed in an effort to make an apparently deficient petition conform to Service requirements.” You do not get to fix a structural problem later. If the entity is wrong, or the workers are misclassified, or the capital came from somewhere it should not have, that is decided before you file and not after.

Which file are you building?

The document sets are not the same, and a checklist that ignores the difference wastes months.

The last row is the point. Whichever route you choose, the source of funds file is the same size and takes the same months. Nothing about a regional center makes that part easier.

Section 1: identity and family

Do this first, and it takes ten minutes. The children’s dates of birth determine whether you are on a clock, and since August 15, 2025 the calculation that decides it is less forgiving than most published material says. See Will My Child Age Out?.

Section 2: lawful source of funds

INA 203(b)(5)(L) and USCIS Policy Manual Volume 6, Part G, Chapter 2 govern. Note the seven-year lookback for petitions filed on or after May 14, 2022.

Always:

By source type:

Salary and employment income. Employment contracts, pay records, employer letters on letterhead confirming role and compensation history, and bank records showing matching deposits.

Business profits or a business sale. Formation documents, ownership evidence, financial statements, board or shareholder resolutions authorising distributions, the purchase or sale agreement, the closing statement, and proof the proceeds landed in your account.

Sale of real property. Title chain, purchase contract, sale contract, closing statement, proof of receipt, and evidence of how you originally acquired the property. That last item is the one people forget and the one that generates the request for evidence.

Inheritance. Death certificate, will or probate or succession documentation, evidence of the estate’s composition, and evidence the decedent acquired the assets lawfully.

Gift. Executed gift instrument, and then the whole source of funds analysis again for the donor. Expect the inquiry to move one generation back.

Loan. Executed loan agreement with real terms, evidence of disbursement, and documentation of the lender’s lawful funds. Unsecured third-party loan proceeds count as capital.

Digital assets. Lawful source of the original money used to purchase, complete exchange and wallet history, know-your-customer records from a regulated exchange, conversion records, and tax reporting of gains.

Section 3: path of funds

Source is where the money came from. Path is how it reached the enterprise’s account. They are graded separately, and path is where more files fail than people expect.

• Bank statements for every account the money touched, covering the full period, not selected months
• Wire transfer confirmations for each leg, with SWIFT records where available
• Currency exchange records and the applicable rate for each conversion
• Foreign exchange quota documentation for each remitter where currency controls apply, plus that remitter’s own source documentation
• An explanation, in writing, for every deposit that is not obviously accounted for. Unexplained deposits are the single most common request-for-evidence trigger in the trace.
• A funds flow chart. One page, boxes and arrows, exhibit numbers on each leg. Required by no regulation and the most valuable page in the file.

The document nobody asks for and everyone should prepare: a source and path memorandum. A narrative, ten to twenty pages, telling the story in order and citing the exhibit for each assertion. The officer’s job becomes verification instead of reconstruction. Files that read well get approved more often, and this is why.

Section 4: the new commercial enterprise

Tracking 8 C.F.R. 204.6(j)(1) and (j)(2).

For regional center cases, add the approved regional center designation and the I-956F project approval or evidence of its filing.

Section 5: the business plan and job creation

For a direct investment the business plan is the case, and the standard is Matter of Ho, 22 I&N Dec. 206 (AAO 1998), which requires a market analysis, permits and licenses, the production process where relevant, executed contracts, the marketing strategy, organizational structure and personnel experience, staffing requirements with a hiring timetable and job descriptions, and projections with their objective bases, and which says that above all “the business plan must be credible.”

Job creation exhibits, per 8 C.F.R. 204.6(j)(4): Forms I-9 for each qualifying employee; payroll records and quarterly wage reports; federal and state employment tax filings; job descriptions confirming positions require at least 35 hours a week; evidence of each employee’s qualifying status; for regional center cases the economic impact analysis and the model used; and for a troubled business, pre-investment employment levels and evidence of maintenance.

What is not on this list, deliberately: anyone in nonimmigrant status, and any independent contractor. Neither counts.

Section 6: the personal immigration filings

• Form I-526E, or Form I-526 for a standalone direct investment, with the full exhibit set
• If concurrently filing and a number is available: Forms I-485, I-765, I-131, medical examinations on Form I-693, and civil documents for each family member
• If consular processing: DS-260, civil documents, police certificates, and the medical exam at the designated facility
• Later, Form I-829 within the ninety days immediately preceding the second anniversary of conditional residence. That filing has its own evidence list, and it is not the same one.

Check current form editions on the day you file. USCIS rejects outdated editions and they change without much notice.

Section 7: what your accountant needs, in parallel

This is not tax advice. But four of these have deadlines and one of them has a cliff.

• FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR), for foreign financial accounts exceeding $10,000 in aggregate at any point in the year
• IRS Form 8938, for specified foreign financial assets, thresholds beginning at $50,000
• IRS Form 3520, for gifts from a nonresident individual or foreign estate exceeding $100,000
• FinCEN Form 105, for physically transporting more than $10,000 across the border

And the part that is not a form. Your residency starting date under IRC 7701(b) is generally the first day you are present as a lawful permanent resident, and from that date you are taxed on worldwide income. Almost everything useful a cross-border tax advisor can do happens before that date, and some of it cannot be done afterward at any price.

The order to do this in

1. Children’s birth certificates and passports.Ten minutes, and it tells you whether you are on a clock.
2. The source and path trace.Months. Start here, not with project selection.
3. Cross-border tax consultation.Before money moves and long before the visa issues.
4. Project or business selection.In parallel with 2, never after it.
5. Business plan, for a direct case, once the business is chosen.
6. Assemble, translate, index, and write the memorandum.
7. File.

Most people do this list in roughly the reverse order, choose a project first, and discover in month four that the money cannot be documented the way they assumed.

I ask for two things at the first meeting: the children’s birth certificates and a one-paragraph description of where the money came from. That is usually enough to know whether the case has a timing problem, a documentation problem, both, or neither. It has never once taken more than twenty minutes, and it has more than once saved somebody a year.

The cheapest hour in an investor visa case is the first one.

Before you wire anything, send us the funds story and the family’s dates of birth. We will tell you what the file is going to require and how long it will take, while you can still change the plan.

Schedule a call · Send us your situation · Call or text 512.761.8479

Client scenarios in this post are composites drawn from multiple matters, with identifying facts changed. They are illustrations, not predictions. No outcome is typical and none is promised.

This post is general information about immigration law. It is not investment advice, securities advice, or tax advice, and we are not your tax advisors. Bring in independent financial and cross-border tax counsel before money moves.

Kyle M. Kinzy is the principal of Kinzy Law, in West Lake Hills, Texas. He has practiced immigration law since 1998 and is licensed in Texas and Illinois. His practice combines immigration with business and transactional work, which is the combination most investor visa cases actually require: the visa question and the deal question are usually the same question, and they are usually answered by the same document.

Not certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

This page is reviewed quarterly. Last reviewed September 1, 2026.