Investment amounts and targeted areas, regional centers and direct investment, job creation counting, the petition and the removal of conditions, sustainment and redeployment, treaty investor status, and parole for start-up founders.
The immigration statute gives the spouse and the unmarried children under twenty-one of an employment-based immigrant the same status and the same priority date as the principal, if accompanying or following to join. A separate provision freezes a child's age by subtracting the time the petition was pending, and requires the child to seek permanent residence within one year of a visa becoming available. Derivative status is entirely dependent: it ends when the principal's does.
Investor petitions and regional center filings are adjudicated by a dedicated program office, while interviews take place at local field offices. The statute requires the interview on a petition to remove conditions within ninety days of filing, at a local office convenient to the parties, allows the Secretary to waive it under published criteria, and forbids waiver where the investment was in a sanctioned entity.
Bridge financing is interim capital, usually a short-term loan or sponsor equity, used to begin a project before investor subscriptions are complete and later repaid from those subscriptions. Agency policy permits jobs created by bridge-financed activity to be credited to the immigrant investors whose capital replaces the bridge, provided the financing was temporary in nature and contemplated as such. Permanent financing refinanced after the fact stands on much weaker ground.
Direct jobs estimated to be created by construction activity lasting less than two years are counted by multiplying the estimate by the fraction of the two-year period the activity lasts. Indirect jobs may satisfy no more than ninety percent of the ten-job requirement, and where the jobs come from construction lasting less than two years that ceiling drops to seventy-five percent. Outside a regional center, only jobs the enterprise itself employs may be counted at all.
A regional center is designated on an application showing a defined, contiguous and limited geographic area, reasonable predictions of pooled investment and job creation, monitoring and compliance policies, and bona fides filings for every person in a position of substantive authority. Significant changes to structure, ownership or administration require advance notice. An annual statement and an annual Integrity Fund fee follow, and non-payment of the fee for ninety days requires termination.
An employee of a treaty enterprise qualifies for the classification where the employee holds the nationality of the treaty country and either performs duties of an executive or supervisory character or possesses special qualifications essential to the efficient operation of the enterprise. Executive and supervisory claims are tested against control and responsibility. Essentiality is tested against a list of factors, and the regulation treats some essential skills as temporary by nature.
