EB-5 Immigrant Investor Approval — Direct Investment in a New York TEA Franchise F&B Project

IMMIGRATION LAW · SONG LAW FIRM SUCCESS STORY

Client Profile

The client, in his late thirties and from an Asia-Pacific country, is an experienced entrepreneur who had operated family-owned businesses in distribution and food service for many years. After winding down operations at home, he sought to relocate to the United States with his spouse and one minor child and to personally run a franchise F&B project in the Northeast. He selected the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program as his primary immigration path because it allowed him to combine active business operation with the goal of permanent residence for his entire immediate family. He brought to the table extensive hands-on experience in F&B operations, established relationships with equipment vendors, and — critically — a well-documented history of tax-compliant income and family-business ownership in the home country.

Case Background

Rather than investing through a Regional Center, the client chose the direct investment track, committing capital to a franchise F&B project located within a Targeted Employment Area (TEA) in New York State. Under the direct investment structure, the investor must be materially involved in the business and personally responsible for satisfying the ten full-time job-creation requirement, unlike Regional Center projects that can rely on indirect and induced job counting methodologies. The client understood from the outset that this route imposed a heavier operational burden but preferred it because he intended to be the day-to-day operator of the business and did not want to rely on a third-party project sponsor.

At the intake stage, the most challenging piece was the source-of-funds documentation. The client's investment capital was a mixture of proceeds from selling equity in a long-standing family business and personal savings accumulated over more than a decade. Because those funds had traveled through multiple accounts, an intermediate currency exchange, and — briefly — an affiliated corporate account before reaching the U.S. project escrow, satisfying USCIS's requirement for a complete and traceable path of funds was going to be far from trivial. The intake also flagged a modest amount of pre-existing debt that had been repaid before the equity sale, which needed to be squarely addressed rather than left in ambiguous status.

Legal Issues

First, TEA qualification. Song Law Firm needed to verify that the project's specific census tract met current TEA standards, based on the most recent census data and unemployment rates published by the relevant state agency, and to document that determination with primary-source citations in a way that would survive USCIS scrutiny even if area statistics shifted during the pendency of the petition.

Second, job creation in a direct-investment structure. Under EB-5, at least ten qualifying full-time positions — measured as W-2 employment of at least thirty-five hours per week — must be created and maintained within a defined period following admission as a conditional resident. The business plan, hiring roadmap, and market analysis had to make it credible to a USCIS officer that a single franchise F&B location, in this particular trade area, would in fact reach and sustain that headcount without relying on speculative expansion.

Third, source and path of funds. It was necessary to demonstrate that the sale of family-business equity had been lawful under the home country's tax and corporate rules, that the proceeds had been fully declared and taxed, and then to reconstruct — step by step, with matching bank records at each hop — how the proceeds had moved from local accounts, through currency exchange, through an affiliated corporate intermediary, and finally into the U.S. project escrow. Every step needed a receipt, a statement, and a legal explanation.

Song Law Firm Strategy

From the very first meeting, Song Law Firm coordinated with the client's U.S. CPA and with accounting advisors in the home country. Working together, they rebuilt, on a strict timeline basis, the sale agreement for the family business, the before-and-after financial statements, and the corresponding tax filings. This produced a source-of-funds matrix — essentially a single-page ledger — that showed at a glance how the capital had been accumulated over many years, how the equity sale had crystallized that value, and how each subsequent transfer moved the money one hop closer to the U.S. escrow.

On the business side, the firm assembled a comprehensive package: the executed franchise agreement, the store lease and landlord estoppel, buildout and equipment quotes from qualified contractors, a market analysis for the specific trade area, and a five-year financial forecast prepared jointly with the CPA. For the job-creation requirement in particular, the firm detailed a phased hiring schedule tied to each stage of the store opening — front-of-house, back-of-house, shift supervisors, and administrative support — and supported the projections with local labor-market data drawn from the state department of labor. Wherever the plan relied on assumptions, those assumptions were footnoted so a reviewing officer could evaluate them independently.

Process

Several months after the I-526E petition was filed, USCIS issued a Request for Evidence focused on the source of funds. The officer specifically asked for additional explanation about a segment of the fund path in which some of the capital had passed briefly through a third-party account before reaching the U.S. escrow. The officer also requested clarification about the timing of certain transfers relative to the underlying sale agreement.

Song Law Firm responded with a tax-advisor memo confirming that the third-party account was in fact an affiliated corporate account commonly used for large fund transfers under the home country's tax framework, and that all transfers had been reported and taxed appropriately. That memo was paired with page-by-page reconciliations of the underlying account statements — with certified translations — so the officer could match each transfer against the narrative without needing to reconstruct anything independently. The response itself was drafted as a continuous story so that the reviewing officer could follow the money from its earliest origin to its arrival at the U.S. project without leaving the RFE package. A supplemental chart mapped each dollar figure in the response to a specific tab in the evidence binder.

Result

After approximately eight months of adjudication from filing to decision, the client's I-526E petition was approved. The approval opened the way for the client, his spouse, and his minor child to proceed to the next stage — either consular processing at the U.S. embassy in the home country or adjustment of status if the family was already lawfully present in the United States — leading to conditional permanent residence for all three family members. On the project side, the client is now executing the phased hiring plan as originally filed, keeping detailed W-2 and payroll records that will serve as the evidentiary backbone at the I-829 stage when the conditions on residence are removed. The firm continues to advise on ongoing compliance and record-keeping through that removal-of-conditions phase.

Lessons

For EB-5, and especially for direct investment cases, the two central pillars are source of funds and job creation. Both need to be engineered from day one and treated as a single, integrated evidentiary package rather than separate exhibits assembled at different times. When capital has traveled through multiple accounts, the goal is to give the officer a single page — a narrative — from which every transfer can be tied back to a bank statement, wire receipt, or contract in one binder.

Equally important is the way job creation is documented in industries like franchise F&B, where turnover can be high. The record should show sustained full-time positions with continuous W-2 employment, not simply headcount at a snapshot moment. Payroll records, employee handbooks, and job descriptions all matter, because at the I-829 stage the record must speak for itself years after the fact. Because immigration outcomes turn on the specific facts, the strength of the evidence, and shifting USCIS policy, a past success does not guarantee that a similar case will be decided the same way. Anyone considering an EB-5 filing should discuss the specifics directly with a qualified immigration attorney early in the planning process — ideally before capital begins to move — so the paper trail is built correctly from the very first transfer.