An EB-5 regional center is an organization designated by USCIS to pool investor capital and deploy it into job-creating projects in the United States. To receive and maintain that designation, a regional center must meet ongoing USCIS requirements covering compliance, reporting, and the management of investor funds. There are currently more than 600 designated regional centers in the United States. Most of them have a website.
Many of them publish impressive statistics. Some of those statistics are accurate, independently verified, and backed by decades of documented outcomes. Others are not.
For a prospective EB-5 investor, the challenge is not finding regional centers. It is knowing which questions cut through the marketing language and reveal what a regional center has actually delivered, and how they can prove it.
The five questions below are not a checklist. They are a framework for evaluating the evidence a regional center puts in front of you, and for recognizing what is missing when they cannot answer directly.
1. How many EB-5 investors have you worked with, and across how many projects?
Scale matters in EB-5, but not for the reasons investors sometimes assume. A large portfolio is not proof of quality. What scale reveals, when examined carefully, is whether a regional center operator has enough history to be evaluated meaningfully.
A regional center that has financed five projects cannot tell you very much about how it performs across different market conditions, different project types, or different regulatory environments. An operator with 75 or more projects behind it has a record that can be examined across multiple economic cycles, including periods when things did not go according to plan.
The follow-up question matters as much as the headline number: what happened when conditions got difficult? The 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the sweeping regulatory changes introduced by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 each placed real stress on regional center operators. An operator that emerged from those periods with its petition approval rates and repayment record intact has demonstrated something that cannot be manufactured retroactively.
What to listen for: specifics. Project names, sectors, timelines, outcomes. Vague references to “a strong portfolio” without supporting detail are a signal to ask harder.
2. What is your petition approval rate, and has it held under post-RIA scrutiny?
For most EB-5 investors, the primary objective is U.S. permanent residency. The USCIS petition approval record is therefore the most direct measure of whether a regional center is delivering on its core promise.
There are two petitions that matter: the I-526E (filed at the start of the investment, establishing eligibility) and the I-829 (filed after the required job creation period, converting conditional to permanent residence). Approval rates on both should be available, and both should be verifiable.
The context for those rates matters as much as the numbers themselves. USCIS scrutiny increased significantly following the 2022 Reform and Integrity Act, which introduced new compliance requirements and expanded oversight of regional center operators. A regional center with high approval rates from a decade ago but limited post-RIA history has a shorter, less tested record than it may appear.
What to listen for: the denominator. An approval rate calculated only on adjudicated petitions, excluding pending cases, tells a more accurate story than one inflated by counting open files. Ask specifically how many petitions have been filed, how many have been adjudicated, and what the outcomes were.
3. Has an independent third party verified your track record, and can I see the documentation?
This is the question most investors do not think to ask, and the one that separates the regional centers with verifiable records from those with self-reported ones.
Any regional center can publish statistics on its website. The figures can be updated at any time, framed to show the most favorable view, and presented without any external accountability. A prospective investor has no way to audit those numbers independently without access to the underlying documentation.
Third-party attestation changes that equation. When an independent accounting firm examines a regional center’s records, it applies established professional standards to verify that what is being reported is accurate. The firm has no financial interest in the outcome, and its findings carry a different weight than any claim the regional center makes about itself.
Since 2019, CanAm Enterprises has commissioned an annual financial attestation conducted by PKF O’Connor Davies, LLP, an independent accounting firm with no financial relationship with CanAm. PKF’s most recent attestation, covering data through December 31, 2025, confirmed a 99.4% I-526 petition approval rate on adjudicated petitions across eleven regional centers, 3,047 I-829 approvals granting permanent U.S. residency, and $2.5 billion in EB-5 capital returned to investors. The executive summary and full data tables are publicly available.
Not every regional center offers this. Asking the question directly, and asking to see the documentation, will tell you a great deal about how seriously a regional center takes its accountability to investors.
For more on what independent attestation means and what CanAm’s verified record looks like, see: What CanAm’s Track Record Actually Means for EB-5 Investors and CanAm 2025 PKF Attestation.
4. How are investor funds protected, and what oversight structures are in place?
EB-5 investing involves committing a substantial sum, typically $800,000 in a Targeted Employment Area or $1.05 million in a standard area, to a project managed by a third party. The structural safeguards governing how those funds are handled deserve careful examination.
There are several layers of protection worth asking about specifically:
- Independent fund administration. A regional center that uses an independent third-party fund administrator, rather than managing investor capital entirely in-house, provides an additional layer of accountability. The administrator’s role is to oversee fund flows and maintain records independently of the regional center operator.
- Broker-dealer registration. Securities offerings in the EB-5 space may be structured in ways that require FINRA registration. A regional center operator with a FINRA-registered broker-dealer affiliate is operating under regulatory oversight that does not apply to all market participants.
- Escrow and FDIC coverage. Investor capital held in escrow before deployment should be held at an FDIC-insured institution, providing protection against bank failure during the period before funds are committed to a project.
CanAm Enterprises operates with each of these structures in place. CanAm Investor Services, established in 2012, is a FINRA-registered broker-dealer and was the first such entity in the EB-5 industry. JTC USA Holdings, Inc. serves as independent fund administrator, and investor capital held in escrow is covered by FDIC insurance. These are not standard features across the industry. They are worth asking about specifically when evaluating any regional center.
5. What does your capital repayment history look like, and how is it documented?
Immigration outcomes and capital preservation are related goals, but they are not the same thing. An investor can receive a green card and still lose part or all of the capital investment if the underlying project underperforms. The repayment record reflects something the petition approval rate does not: whether the projects a regional center selects actually delivered for investors financially, over time.
Repayment is not guaranteed in EB-5. It depends on project performance, the quality of the regional center’s underwriting and project selection, and the structure of the investment. A strong repayment record over a large number of projects is therefore a meaningful signal, provided it can be verified.
Several specific questions are worth asking: How many projects have been repaid in full? What is the total dollar amount returned to investors? Is that figure self-reported, or has it been verified by an independent party? Are there projects where repayment was delayed or incomplete, and if so, what happened?
PKF O’Connor Davies’ attestation of CanAm’s record confirmed $2.5 billion in EB-5 capital returned to investors across more than 3,900 families, with 53 projects repaid in full. These figures were examined line by line by an independent accounting firm. For investors evaluating any regional center’s repayment claims, the question to ask is whether the same level of independent documentation exists.
The Standard Worth Holding Regional Centers To
These five questions will not produce the same answers from every regional center. That is precisely the point.
The EB-5 program involves a significant financial commitment made in service of an important life goal. The regional center an investor selects becomes responsible for managing that capital, structuring the project, overseeing job creation, and reporting accurately on outcomes. The standard of evidence a regional center can offer in response to these questions is a direct reflection of how seriously it takes that responsibility.
The most successful EB-5 regional centers share a common trait: they can answer each of these questions directly, with documentation to back up every claim. That standard is not universal across the industry, but it is the right benchmark for any investor making a decision of this magnitude.
Petition approval rates should be verifiable, not just asserted. Repayment records should be independently documented, not self-reported. Structural safeguards should be in place before investors need them. And the history of a regional center operator should be long enough, and tested enough, that its record across difficult conditions is available for review.
For investors who want to examine CanAm’s answers to each of these questions, CanAm’s full track record, independently attested by PKF O’Connor Davies, LLP, is available at canamenterprises.com/company/eb5-track-record.
Ready to Review the Record?
CanAm Enterprises has more than 20 years of EB-5 experience and a track record independently attested by PKF O’Connor Davies, LLP. With $4 billion in EB-5 capital raised across 75+ projects and $2.5 billion returned to more than 3,900 investor families, CanAm’s record is publicly available and independently verified.
To speak with a member of CanAm’s team, contact (212) 668-0690 or email info@canamenterprises.com. Visit canamenterprises.com to access the full attestation documentation.
