What is a TEA rural area?

To qualify as a TEA rural region, an EB-5 project location must meet a set of particular criteria. Rural areas must not be located within a metropolitan statistical area as defined by the Office of Management and Budget of the United States of America. According to the most recent decennial U.S. Census, a rural region must also be located outside of a town or city with a population of 20,000 people (currently 2010). The project may be recognized as a TEA if it is located in a rural area at the time of the EB-5 investment. The Rural TEA criteria were not changed by the new regulations. A green card lawyer houston explains TEA rural area in this article.

Hight Unemployment Targeted Employment Area

If an EB-5 project area does not qualify as rural, it must have an unemployment rate of at least 150 percent of the national average in order to be designated as a TEA owing to excessive unemployment. While most TEA designations for high unemployment are based on census tract research, a high unemployment area can also be a county or metropolitan statistical area (MSA) that meets the 150 percent national average rate threshold on its own. Individual cities can only qualify if they are both outside of an MSA and have a population of more than 20,000 people. As previously mentioned, census tract combination is now limited to census tracts that are "immediately contiguous" to the project's census tract(s). For our spanish brothers who want to read the articles in spanish about immigration do checkout los mejores abogados de inmigración.

Evidence needed for TEA Qualification

The designation of a targeted employment region is decided as part of the I-526 application. The EB-5 visa applicant must show that their project is in a rural or high-unemployment area with sufficient documentation. States can no longer certify high unemployment TEAs under the new regulations, thus each I-526 must include evidence that the area where the petitioner has invested or is actively in the process of investing is a high unemployment area at the time of determination. This proof for high unemployment TEAs, according to USCIS, should be reliable and verifiable and could include the following:

Conclusion

For a Rural TEA, documentation demonstrating the project location is both outside of an MSA (according to the Office of Management and Budget) and outside of a city or town with a population of 20,000 or more should be included in the I-526 petition (per the most recent decennial census).

There is no requirement to present evidence of TEA qualification if the EB-5 investment exceeds the $1.8 million level. Understand more about investing in USA here united states investor visa