IN THIS GUIDE · Read personal financing beside the purchase conditions
Identify the loan’s actual security
Hypothetical example: a buyer plans to use a personal loan for an acquisition subject to closing conditions. Provide the executed or proposed financing terms and identify collateral. Personally secured or unsecured borrowing may qualify under applicable rules; enterprise-asset-secured borrowing does not count as the investor’s qualifying investment. Read the security agreement before treating borrowed money as qualifying capital. Identify exactly what secures the debt and whether the enterprise’s own assets are pledged. The practical decision may be to revise financing, document a different source, or delay reliance on the loan until the terms are clear.
Read the conditions affecting commitment
List conditions allowing cancellation, return or release of money and identify who controls the funds. Assess any escrow on its actual terms. Do not assume that every refundable deposit is qualifying committed capital or that every conditional arrangement is necessarily unusable. Create a timeline of deposits, escrow releases, cancellation rights, and closing triggers. Funds need not be handled identically in every transaction, but a refundable arrangement controlled by the investor raises a different question from money exposed to loss under an enforceable business commitment.
Trace the funds into the actual enterprise
Explain lawful source and path, transfers and intended use. Distinguish amounts already paid from future disbursements and separate professional charges. No universal fixed E-2 minimum applies; substantiality depends on the real enterprise and cannot be inferred from the loan amount alone. Use bank statements, sale records, loan documents, and transfer confirmations to trace the lawful source and movement of money. Then tie each payment to a business purpose. This helps distinguish equipment, inventory, lease obligations, and filing costs from amounts that merely appear in a broad purchase total.
Review ownership and operations as well as funding
Identify qualifying treaty nationality, control and the realistic business plan, including nonmarginality. Ownership paperwork and a funded purchase do not by themselves establish U.S. work permission. Have proposed activities and transaction obligations assessed before relying on the closing schedule. Review ownership and the operating role independently. The investor must be able to develop and direct the enterprise, commonly through ownership or control, and the enterprise must carry the appropriate treaty nationality. A plan that relies entirely on passive management may require a different analysis.
Explain enterprise nationality and nonmarginality precisely
The enterprise generally must be at least 50% owned by nationals of the relevant treaty country; the applicant’s passport alone does not establish enterprise nationality. Nonmarginality includes capacity to provide more than a minimal living for the investor and family, with the alternative of a significant economic contribution. Apply those conditions to the real operating proposal rather than importing EB-5’s capital amounts or ten-job rule into E-2. Test the financial forecast against the actual business model. Nonmarginality is not proved by a large opening outlay; it concerns the enterprise’s capacity beyond supporting the investor’s household. Explain assumptions about customers, staffing, revenue, and timing rather than importing an unrelated job-creation standard.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.