The EB-5 minimum investment amount is going up. It is already law, not a proposal moving through Congress. The 2022 Reform and Integrity Act (RIA) built the increase directly into the statute, with the amounts resetting for inflation every five years. The first of those resets is January 1, 2027.
Most of the conversation this year has circled a different date, the September 30, 2026 grandfathering deadline. The two keep getting treated as one event. They are not. They fall in different months, and they guard against completely different risks.
How the inflation adjustment works
The RIA tells USCIS to reset the minimums every five years starting January 1, 2027, and it ties the math to one figure: the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, or CPI-U. That is the standard measure of consumer inflation, published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The calculation runs in three moves:
- Take the standard investment amount and adjust it for cumulative CPI-U change from January 1, 2022 through the adjustment date.
- Round down to the nearest $50,000.
- Set the TEA and qualifying infrastructure minimum at 75 percent of that adjusted standard figure.
What makes this different from past increases is that it runs on its own. No agency has to decide to raise it, and there is no new rule to clear or vote in Congress to wait for. If inflation accumulated, the number moves. USCIS still has to publish the final figures in the Federal Register before they take effect, so the change will not arrive unannounced.
What the new amounts might be
Nobody has the final figure yet, USCIS included. The amount depends on CPI-U data that will not be complete until close to the adjustment date. The direction, though, is clear, and the likely range is not much of a mystery.
Today the minimums sit at $800,000 for TEA and qualifying infrastructure projects and $1,050,000 for everything else, where they have held since the RIA took effect in March 2022. Independent analysts running the inflation math put the likely new TEA minimum somewhere around $900,000 to $937,500, and the standard minimum between roughly $1.2 million and $1.25 million. Those are projections, and the published figures could come in higher or lower.
Two deadlines, two different protections
September 30, 2026 and January 1, 2027 are not the same deadline doing the same job. One is about staying protected. The other is about what the investment costs.
September 30, 2026: grandfathering. An I-526E petition filed on or before this date stays eligible under the current statutory framework even if the Regional Center Program lapses later. That is protection against program-continuity risk. How it applies to any individual case is a question for immigration counsel.
January 1, 2027: the investment adjustment. This is the day the amount resets. It has nothing to do with program continuity and everything to do with the size of the required investment.
Because these are two separate clocks, there is a gap between them. A petition filed in, say, November 2026 would still get the current investment amount, since the increase has not kicked in yet, but it would miss the grandfathering window. The two protections do not expire on the same day, and that is the assumption that trips people up.
What this means for planning
Timing picks up one more variable. The date that decides which amount applies is the date the I-526E is filed. Petitions filed before the effective date keep the current amount. Petitions filed on or after it take the new one.
The published minimum also understates the real cost of entering the program. Moving the capital into the United States carries its own expenses, and they differ a great deal by country. Currency exchange is the most familiar piece, but wire and intermediary bank fees add to it, and some countries cap how much a person can transfer abroad in a year, which makes the process more complex and costly to arrange properly. Most of these costs rise with the size of the transfer, so a higher required investment in 2027 lifts them as well.
An EB-5 filing is not quick: selecting a project, running due diligence, documenting source of funds, and working through it with counsel takes several months. Investment amount is one factor among several, sitting next to visa availability, project quality, and the grandfathering timeline. A realistic look at one’s own timeline, with immigration counsel and a financial advisor involved, holds up better than reacting to a date on the calendar.
The takeaway
The 2027 increase is settled law, and the formula behind it is public. Anyone can follow the same inflation data USCIS will use, and the effective date is already fixed. The exact figures are not official yet, so any specific number circulating now is a forecast. The two dates, January 2027 for the amount and September 2026 for grandfathering, address different questions and deserve to be weighed separately.
About CanAm Enterprises
CanAm Enterprises brings more than 20 years of focus to the U.S. EB-5 program. CanAm has raised more than $4.1 billion from over 8,400 investors, repaid more than $2.5 billion, and financed 75+ projects, facilitating more than 9,400 permanent green cards. CanAm operates 11 regional centers across more than 30 states, with fund administration provided by independent administrator JTC. CanAm Investor Services, a FINRA-registered broker-dealer, supports its offerings.
Prospective investors who want to understand how program timing applies to their situation can contact CanAm to speak with a member of the team. Contact Us: (212) 668-0690 | info@canamenterprises.com | www.canamenterprises.com
