Comment on sustaining the investment requirement

The question suggests that as long as there is no "automatic redemption from the NCE to the investor" if the JCE pays back EB-5 funds to the the NCE prior to the investor's I-829 filing, the investment should be considered sustained. The issue in that scenario is that if the NCE holds the funds in some 'no risk' way (e.g. in a bank account), then USCIS would not consider the investment to be sustained because it is not sustained 'at risk' (i.e. with a chance to gain or lose).

As long as the funds are not paid back to the investor and are being held at the NCE level they are sustained. That said, recently, USCIS has been interpreting the at-risk requirement as truly invested. As a result, the Regional Centers are either redeploying the funds they receive back from the JCE once the loan from the NCE to JCE matures or at maturity of the loan they are exercising their option to extend the loan for one year, if allowed by the PPM, multiple times. Meanwhile, during these extensions if the investors money-at-risk requirement is fulfilled, either by I-829 filing or approval, depending on how conservative the investor and the regional center would like to be, then the funds could be returned back to the investor.