Read the general immigrant investor briefing overview
Buying a company that already employs people and sponsoring one employee under the corporate Gold Card route are different transactions with different applicants. Name the investor, the workers and the intended beneficiary before deciding which body of evidence you are actually building.
For EB-5, establish the employment baseline
An acquisition inherits a payroll; it does not inherit qualifying job creation. Hypothetical example: a Canadian buyer acquires a U.S. machine shop with nine people already on the payroll, and the draft file describes those nine as the jobs the investment will create. What EB-5 counts is at least ten full-time positions for qualifying U.S. workers attributable to the investment, and existing staff matter only where a specific preservation provision for a troubled business genuinely applies to that enterprise on its own facts. Fix the baseline headcount at the acquisition date in writing, from payroll records rather than from the seller’s description, so later growth can be measured against something real. The investor, the investor’s spouse, sons and daughters, and any nonimmigrant workers are all excluded from the qualifying count. Capital is a separate test again: the required amount, lawfully sourced with a documented path from origin into the enterprise, placed at risk, and the investor engaged in management or policy formulation. A contractual right to repayment of the investor’s capital, or a guaranteed rate of return, takes those funds outside qualifying capital; an enterprise’s buy-back option exercisable solely at its own discretion sits under a narrow statutory exception and remains subject to sustainment and every other condition, rather than amounting to an investor repayment entitlement.
For Gold Card, identify the sponsored employee
The corporate route concerns one named person at a time. A company that has just bought a business does not thereby place its whole workforce into that process: there is a sponsoring entity, a specific beneficiary, official vetting and instructions, and payment terms set by the published programme rather than by the purchase agreement. The gift runs from the applicant or sponsor to the U.S. government; nothing flows back, there is no enterprise and no job count, so EB-5 reasoning about capital at risk or sustainment has no application here at all. Underlying EB-1 or EB-2 eligibility, admissibility and visa availability still matter. Published corporate terms include 1% annual maintenance and a 5% charge on transfer, with a fresh background check, and reusing a prior gift for a replacement employee is conditional rather than automatic. Re-verify every figure and condition on the official programme material before any payment is made.
Keep financial events separate from status
Payments and closings are not immigration milestones. Conditional permanent residence in an EB-5 case begins on admission with the immigrant visa, or on approval of adjustment of status — not at the closing of the business purchase, not on filing, and not on the date funds were wired. On the corporate route, a paid gift and a supportive letter from the employer are steps within a process whose outcome is a government determination nobody in the transaction controls. Write the case out as a sequence of stages, each with the record that actually evidences it, and resist the habit of reading a bank confirmation or an employment offer as a permission. The practical payoff is that everyone involved can see at a glance which stage is complete, which is pending, and which has not begun.
Money, gift and status on separate timelines
The two frameworks use money in ways that are not comparable. EB-5 capital minimums, as they stand on 7 September 2026, are US$1,050,000, or US$800,000 where the project qualifies as being in a targeted employment area or as an infrastructure project, with statutory adjustments due to begin on 1 January 2027; that money is invested in a commercial enterprise and stays at risk. An approved petition is not residence: the consular or adjustment stage follows, then two years of conditional residence, then removal of conditions on an I-829 ordinarily filed during the 90 days before the second anniversary of that conditional residence. Gold Card describes something structurally different — a nonrefundable US$15,000 fee per person and, after successful vetting and official instructions, a gift of US$1,000,000 individually or US$2,000,000 through the corporate route, paid to the U.S. government and never returned. Each eligible joining spouse or unmarried child under 21 adds US$15,000 and US$1,000,000. Confirm the current corporate maintenance and transfer conditions separately, and treat neither framework as a guarantee of eligibility, admissibility, visa availability or timing.
What else is on your mind?
Does an EB-5 immigration review tell me whether an investment is good?Is the Gold Card another name for EB-5?Should I assume one Gold Card payment covers my family?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.