IN THIS GUIDE · Document an inheritance and a company-share sale as one clean EB-5 source of funds for a Shannon investor
Start with the EB-5 eligibility and application overview
Treat inherited funds and sale proceeds as two separate trails
Hypothetical example: a Shannon mechanical engineer who retired from a defence-adjacent maintenance contractor plans to fund an EB-5 investment with proceeds from selling his minority share in that company back to the other owners, plus an inheritance from his late mother. Each stream needs its own chain. The share sale needs the shareholder agreement, the buy-back agreement, the valuation, the payment records and the tax treatment. The inheritance needs the will, the estate's notarial or probate documents, the executor's distribution statement and the deposit record. Only then are the two joined.
Explain the origin of the shares, not just their sale
USCIS traces capital back through the asset that produced it. If the engineer acquired his shares through an employee ownership plan, the plan documents and the payroll deductions that bought them are part of the file; if he bought them outright, the original purchase and the funds used for it are. The point is to show that the shares were lawfully acquired before showing they were lawfully sold. Tax returns for the years in question corroborate both.
Choose the project by how it proves jobs and how it treats redeployment
A direct investment counts only the enterprise's own full-time employees, while a regional-center project may count indirect jobs through an economic model. In either structure the investor must engage in management or policy formulation; EB-5 does not invariably require hands-on day-to-day involvement where qualifying policy rights suffice. Read how jobs are allocated among investors, what happens if the project falls short, whether capital may be redeployed, and how the two-year sustainment period is measured. Independent financial advice on the project is separate from immigration advice and should come first.
Plan the family and the two-stage residence together
The spouse and unmarried children under 21 are derivatives; the Child Status Protection Act protects a child's age during petition processing under defined conditions. The Visa Bulletin determines when residence can be granted after approval, and the family enters conditional residence together. Form I-829 is filed in the last ninety days of the two-year period with proof the capital stayed invested and the jobs were created. The engineer's Canadian citizenship is not a requirement; permanent residents may apply.
When the brochure and the offering documents disagree
The qualifying amounts under the 2022 legislation are one million fifty thousand dollars generally and eight hundred thousand dollars for a targeted employment area or infrastructure project; those figures are subject to adjustment and should be verified against current official sources before any commitment. The investor still bears the risk of the project and must review its offering documents, the target-employment-area designation and the job-creation methodology rather than rely on marketing.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.