Reinvesting Into a Second NCE to Create Additional Jobs and Maintain EB-5 Compliance: Webinar With Klasko Immigration Law Partners

In most cases, the EB-5 investment process is straightforward, offering a direct path to U.S. Green Cards. When EB-5 applicants select a reputable project to invest in, they can generally receive their I-526E approvals within a reasonable timeframe and begin to enjoy the benefits of conditional U.S. residency.

However, in some cases EB-5 projects can encounter setbacks. The regional center sponsoring the project may fail to remain compliant with USCIS policies. Or the EB-5 project may not create enough jobs for each of its EB-5 investors to qualify for Green Cards.

If the regional center is terminated, or if the NCE or JCE is debarred, EB-5 investors are not left without options. One way to salvage their immigration petitions is to reinvest in a second EB-5 project. This option can be particularly beneficial to EB-5 applicants who invested at the $500,000 amount prior to the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA).

(Under the terminology of the EB-5 program, an EB-5 project is formally known as a new commercial enterprise [NCE].)

In what situation might an EB-5 investor need to reinvest in a second NCE? And how can investors minimize their immigration risk as they go about this process?

EB5AN’s latest webinar answered these questions with insights from some of the leading players in the EB-5 industry. Our webinar was hosted by EB5AN managing partners Sam Silverman and Mike Schoenfeld, who were joined by Senior VP Tara Niu.

Our guest panelist was H. Ronald Klasko, chairman of Klasko Immigration Law Partners, one of the largest and most well-respected immigration law firms in the world. Klasko Law has assisted over 2,000 EB-5 investors and represented over 50 regional centers.

Ron is the former national president and three-term general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). He was selected for Best Lawyers in America© for 30 consecutive years, and was chosen as most highly-regarded immigration lawyer in the world by International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers.

We give Klasko Immigration our highest recommendation for all matters pertaining to the EB-5 process, including the reinvestment process discussed in this webinar.

We invite you to watch the webinar highlights or read our summary below to learn how reinvestment in a second NCE can salvage an EB-5 petition. Especially if you invested in an EB-5 project at $500,000 before the RIA, this resource may be the key to securing your U.S. Green Card through the EB-5 program.

We will also discuss two EB5AN projects structured specifically for this type of reinvestment.

Watch Webinar Highlights:

Watch Full Webinar:

Why Reinvest in a Second NCE?

Some EB-5 investors who filed years ago under the $500,000 investment threshold can end up in a position where their original investment no longer supports the path to permanent residence. In cases where the regional center was terminated, or the NCE or JCE was debarred, a second investment in an NCE may be needed to preserve EB-5 eligibility, create additional jobs, or keep the capital deployed in a compliant way.

These situations have one thing in common: the investor may not have done anything wrong, yet the original investment may not be enough to support their final EB-5 approval. Investment in a second NCE can become the mechanism for curing a job shortfall, maintaining capital at risk, or the compliance needed for the case to move forward.

Relief for Good-Faith Investors Under the RIA

Before the RIA, investors had very little protection when a project failed through no fault of their own. Even if an investor had followed the rules, invested lawfully, and acted in good faith, there was no clear path to preserve the case if the project collapsed, funds were misused, jobs were not created, or fraud came to light. The RIA changed that by creating a form of relief for good-faith investors.

That change was important, but it did not solve every situation. The statutory relief is limited, and it does not apply to every troubled EB-5 investment. In practice, the law leaves major gaps and still forces some investors into difficult positions.

When can an EB-5 investor qualify for relief under the RIA? The RIA does not provide a relief for every failed project. Relief is generally available only when USCIS takes one of two formal actions: terminating the regional center or debarring the NCE or JCE. Without one of those events, an investor may have very few options under the statute, even if the underlying project clearly went wrong.

So, a project may fail financially. Jobs may fall short. Capital may be lost. Funds may even have been diverted. But if USCIS has not terminated the regional center and has not debarred the relevant entities, the investor may not be able to access the relief framework created by the RIA.

The investor’s good faith alone is not enough.

At the same time, regional center termination can sometimes create an unexpected opening for investors whose cases were otherwise stuck. If a project was unsuccessful and the investor had no practical way to satisfy EB-5 requirements through the original structure, termination of the regional center may create an opportunity to seek relief that did not previously exist.

When USCIS terminates a regional center, it must send notice to the investors in the projects sponsored by that regional center. That notice starts a 180-day decision period. Within that window, the investor must choose how to proceed.

One option is to continue without seeking special relief. That may make sense if the project was completed, the required jobs were created, and the case remains viable despite the regional center’s termination.

A second option is for the existing NCE to affiliate with a different regional center. In theory, that preserves the current project structure while restoring the required regional center sponsorship. But in practice, this appears to be uncommon.

The third option is the one that draws the most attention in distressed cases: the investor makes an additional investment in a new project sponsored by a different regional center. For qualifying pre-RIA investors, that additional amount may be $500,000 rather than $800,000. This route can offer a path forward where the original project can no longer support approval of the petition or removal of conditions.

What Reinvestment Requires

Choosing this third option is not a simple transfer. It requires a new investment process with full evidentiary support. The investor must document the source and path of funds for the additional capital. The filing must also include the project and regional center documentation for the new investment, much like a new I-526 petition package.

For investors whose original projects failed because of fraud, loss of funds, or inadequate job creation, this second investment can be the only realistic way to keep the EB-5 case alive. The relief framework exists, but it is narrow, highly procedural, and available only when the statutory trigger has been met.

Debarment Relief Exists on Paper but Remains Unavailable in Practice

For investors dealing with a failed or impaired EB-5 project, debarment offers a potentially broader path than regional center termination. Where USCIS debarment applies to the NCE or the JCE, the investor can move capital into another project even if the regional center itself has never been terminated. The amount required for that follow-on investment is also more flexible. Instead of a fixed additional $500,000, the investor may be able to invest a lower amount, so long as the new investment is sufficient to create the jobs still needed for EB-5 compliance. In practical terms, that means a project with excess job capacity could accept a smaller investment and still solve the investor’s shortfall.

That flexibility would be useful in many distressed cases, especially where the underlying project has serious problems but USCIS never takes the step of terminating the regional center. Under the RIA framework, those investors should have another route available if the NCE or JCE is debarred.

The problem is that this route has remained largely theoretical because USCIS still has not put the debarment mechanism into workable form.

Several years after the RIA was enacted, there are still no regulations laying out the debarment procedure, no standards explaining what conduct leads to debarment, no policy memorandum, and no forms. That leaves investors with a statutory form of relief that cannot be used in any predictable way. This gap has become serious enough that federal litigation is being pursued in an effort to force USCIS to implement the debarment provision. Until that happens, investors who need rescue relief remain largely dependent on regional center termination, even in cases where debarment would be the cleaner and more practical solution.

A Recent Example of Reinvestment After RC Termination

A recent case shows how a second investment can work when termination relief is available. In that case, the investor originally filed in 2015, received approval in 2016, and later adjusted status. After USCIS issued a termination notice in February 2025, the investor received a deadline of August 29 to act. A few months later, the investor made a qualifying investment in a new project, EB5AN’s ONE Tampa, and obtained approval of the amendment in December. Their Green Card approval followed in February.

This shows that a second NCE investment can move a case forward even after the original regional center structure has collapsed.

Who Can Qualify for Reinvestment

Eligibility still begins with the investor’s own conduct. The relief described here is reserved for good-faith investors, meaning investors who did not participate in the wrongdoing of the regional center, the NCE, or the JCE.

The investor must be tied either to a regional center that has been terminated or to an NCE or JCE that has been debarred. In real cases, however, regional center termination has been doing nearly all of the work. Among roughly one hundred rescue cases handled by Klasko in this area, none involved NCE or JCE debarment. That makes the contrast clear: debarment could offer broader and cheaper relief, but termination is still the mechanism investors are actually using.

How a Second Investment Can Receive Job Credit

A second EB-5 investment does not necessarily require the investor to wait for a fresh round of job creation after the new capital is deployed. In some cases, the investor may receive credit for jobs that were already created before joining the new project. That can happen where the project contemplated EB-5 capital as part of the financing structure before those jobs were created. Under that approach, the timing of the individual investor’s entry does not automatically prevent those jobs from being allocated to the investor later.

That feature can make second-NCE reinvestment workable in situations where time is limited and the investor cannot wait for a project to create additional jobs. A project that has already spent substantial capital, moved well into development, and generated jobs may offer a clearer path because the underlying economic activity is no longer speculative in the same way. For an investor who needs additional jobs in order to preserve EB-5 eligibility, that kind of project can present a stronger factual record than one that has not yet broken ground or has only a thin job margin.

What EB-5 Investors Should Look For in a Second Project

From an immigration-risk perspective, the most attractive replacement projects are those with a large job cushion. In regional center offerings, that means the project is expected to create materially more jobs than are needed for the EB-5 investors already in the deal. A project with a meaningful surplus gives a reinvesting investor a better chance of being allocated enough jobs without depending on narrow margins or aggressive assumptions.

Projects with 20% to 30% more jobs than required can work especially well in these rescue situations because there are excess jobs available for reassignment to incoming investors.

The stage of construction and the amount of money already spent also shape the risk profile. The preferred scenario is a project that is already underway rather than one still waiting to launch, has already created a substantial number of jobs, has already deployed significant capital, and still has more than enough remaining job capacity to cover existing and incoming investors. That combination gives the investor several layers of protection at once: visible project progress, existing economic activity, and room for job allocation beyond the minimum threshold.

It is also important to distinguish between total projected jobs and jobs already created to date, while keeping both in the analysis. A project may have an attractive total job count on paper, but an investor evaluating a second NCE would generally want more than a theoretical model. A project farther along in construction, with spending already completed and jobs already generated, offers a firmer basis for analysis than one relying mostly on future execution. At the same time, total projected surplus still matters because even a project with strong progress to date must have enough remaining job capacity to cover all investors comfortably.

For these reinvestment cases, affiliation with a regional center is also key because investors are usually relying on indirect and induced job creation rather than only direct payroll jobs. That means the new NCE generally needs to be tied to a regional center if the investor expects to count the broader job impacts that regional center projects are designed to capture. Still, most investors pursuing second-NCE relief will be looking for a project that is affiliated with a regional center, already active, and rich in excess jobs.

Filing Timing After Reinvestment

When an investor makes a qualifying second investment, the filing timeline for Form I-829 may still follow the original schedule tied to the grant of conditional permanent residence. The law does not clearly require the investor to wait and file the petition based on a new two-year clock running from the date of reinvestment. The clearer point is on the approval side: even where the I-829 is filed on the original timeline, approval appears to remain tied to the passage of two years after the new investment has been made.

That distinction shapes how these cases are being approached. The filing deadline may continue to run from the original period of conditional residence, which means the investor may still need to submit the I-829 within the normal window rather than hold the petition back until two years have passed from the second investment. At the same time, filing does not appear to accelerate the final result, because the petition may remain pending until the two-year period tied to the reinvestment has been satisfied. This leaves investors in a position where filing and approval may operate on different timelines.

A Narrow Statutory Framework and Many Open Questions

Beyond that general reading, many of the remaining issues depend heavily on the facts of the individual case. The statutory framework does not answer every practical question that arises once an investor moves into a second NCE, and formal USCIS guidance has been limited. As a result, several of the most detailed timing and procedural questions still require case-specific analysis rather than broad rules that can be applied with confidence across the board.

That uncertainty is heightened by the fact that the first major wave of rescue filings has only recently moved through the 180-day deadline process. A large group of investors reached the same filing deadline on March 27 after USCIS terminated a substantial number of regional centers at the same time and issued notices on the same day. Because so many cases were pushed into the system at once, there has been very little opportunity to see how USCIS will handle these filings in practice after submission.

For investors coming from terminated regional centers, the path forward now exists, but many of the practical answers will likely come from how USCIS responds to these pending cases rather than from rules that have already been clearly laid out in advance.

EB5AN’s EB-5 Projects Structured for Reinvestment and Job Creation

Our ONE Tampa project provided an early example of how a reinvestment could work in practice. The project was an existing EB-5 offering being developed by the Kolter Group as a vertical condominium tower in a high-employment area, and it became a working model for investors who needed to make a second qualifying investment after problems arose in an earlier case. At least one investor using that structure has already received their Green Card.

After that initial experience, our Mosaic and Spring Haven EB-5 projects were structured specifically for reinvestment investors. Both projects were selected with the features that tend to make a second NCE more workable from an EB-5 perspective: active construction, substantial job creation already in place, and enough remaining development activity to continue generating additional jobs well beyond the minimum needed for each investor. That structure helps accommodate cases where prior jobs may be creditable while also preserving room for further job creation if adjudicators take a narrower view.

Spring Haven has Form I-956F approval as an urban high-unemployment-area project under the RIA, which adds another layer of safety for investors evaluating available options.

These offerings were also positioned with a longer time horizon in mind.

The need for EB-5 investments emerged quickly and in larger numbers than expected, and the first wave of affected investors does not appear likely to be the last. Because both projects still have substantial construction remaining, they can remain available over the next several years for additional investors who may later need to move into a second NCE after problems with an earlier EB-5 investment.

Salvaging Your EB-5 Petition Through Reinvestment

For investors whose original EB-5 project can no longer carry the case to the finish line, reinvestment into a second NCE may offer a viable way to preserve the immigration process, but success depends on acting within the required window, working with experienced counsel, and choosing a replacement project with strong job creation, meaningful progress, and enough surplus capacity to support the petition through final adjudication.

As Sam Silverman notes, “A second NCE can give an investor a path forward, but only when the new investment is supported by solid compliance, real job creation, and a structure built to hold up under scrutiny.”

To get started on the reinvestment process and secure your U.S. Green Cards—or for any questions about EB-5—schedule a free consultation with EB5AN.