What does USCIS examine when my EB-5 investment is a gift from my parents?
USCIS looks beyond the gift itself and examines where your parents lawfully obtained the funds and how the money ultimately reached the EB-5 investment. If the gift came from the sale of an asset, documenting the sale may not be enough — USCIS may also examine how your parents originally acquired that asset and the lawful source of the funds used to purchase it. We have reviewed a case where the investor’s petition was denied because the parents’ original purchase funds were not sufficiently documented and the later transactions created additional source-of-funds questions.
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Related questions
Tax records can be important evidence that investment funds were earned or obtained lawfully and, in a gift case, that the donor had the financial ability to provide the funds. Missing or inconsistent tax records can create gaps in the source-of-funds documentation, especially when the claimed source is salary, business income or other taxable earnings. Depending on how the funds were earned, transferred or gifted, relevant records may come from more than one country, and separate U.S. tax or reporting requirements may also need to be considered.
No. Approval of the project’s Form I-956F does not guarantee approval of an individual investor’s Form I-526E. USCIS still separately reviews whether each investor meets the EB-5 requirements, including whether the investment funds came from a lawful source and whether the path of the funds is properly documented. We have reviewed a case where the project-level filing had already been approved, but the investor’s petition was still denied because of problems with the source-of-funds documentation, missing tax records and inconsistencies in the filing.
Yes. USCIS reviews the evidence in an EB-5 filing as a whole, and material inconsistencies can create questions about whether the source and path of your investment funds have been sufficiently established.
For example, conflicting information about your employment, income, property ownership, financial transactions or the movement of funds can become significant if it affects the claimed source of your investment. An inconsistency does not automatically mean the case will be denied, but material discrepancies should be identified, explained and, where possible, supported by objective documentation.
It is better to reconcile these issues before filing rather than wait for USCIS to raise them later.