Vinodh Ram from India

Sure. To start with, my name is Vinodh Ram, and I’m from India. I’d spent over 16 years in Singapore prior to relocating to the U.S. on an L-1A visa. I’d been to US multiple times before on B-1, representing my previous employers, but in December 2024, I had an opportunity with my employer to move to U.S. to manage a project. So, I was moved here on an L-1A visa.

I have IT background. I’ve been working in IT for over 20 years, so I felt this was a great opportunity for me to explore and settle myself with my family in the U.S.

So, when I moved to U.S. on an L-1A visa, my employer sponsored the I-140 through EB-1C. So the I-140 was filed in March of ’25 and was approved in April of ’25. But as you know, for Indian nationals, the priority date is three years back. So that’s why I had to pursue the EB-5 route.

Absolutely. So I was thinking, “Okay, three years’ wait time, anything could change within this three years.” So I was looking at other visa pathways to a faster Green Card. That’s when I came across the EB-5 pathway. And specifically under the EB-5, the rural was more attractive because the dates were current for a Green Card, and that’s why I went towards this visa.

I didn’t consider any other visa, because all of the visas for Green Card had a longer wait time. EB-5 was the fastest pathway.

Sure. The very first step with Murthy Law Firm was that the attorneys set clear expectations. The expectation was that, okay, from the time I started engaging with them, they said it would take approximately two months to put together the entire documentation. And they said the most time-consuming exercise in all of this was the source of funds.

In my case, it was a bit easier. While it still took two months, it was a bit easier because I had all the records that they wanted—the record of my eight years of payslips, eight years of my tax, eight years of my bank statements, all need source of fund information, which was quite easier for the law firm to put together the entire documentation. While the documentation ran into several hundred pages, but all the information was there.

There were a lot of back-and-forth with the attorney. They had certain clarifications on my bank statements, on the source of funds. All the clarifications was provided. And at the end, they prepared a thorough document. They sent it to me for a complete review. I reviewed it, and at the end of it, that’s when they went ahead with the filing of the petition.

Okay. The first recommendation or suggestion for them is to go with a very seasoned law firm, a law firm which has tons of experience to back them up, a law firm which will stand by the petitioner throughout their journey, have very good communication with them, set clear expectations.

And then, once the law firm is chosen, then they should ensure that all their source of fund documentation is very clean and they have appropriate evidences for each and every source of fund information. Along with that, the petitioner should also understand that it’s not just the investment on the regional center. They also need to ensure that there is going to be substantial investment towards the actual petition, USCIS filing fees, the attorney fees, and any other consulting fees that they would need to shell out on this journey.

And one more important thing is, along the way, there could be some RFEs if there was any doubt from USCIS on the source of fund. So the petitioner should negotiate with the attorney beforehand that any responses to the RFE is also included in the overall fees.

That is precisely right.

The very first red flag is understanding if the project is I-956F approved or not. Some of the projects the consultants shared were in the process of getting the approval, but they were not approved. So, as an investor, they need to understand that the basis of the 526E petition getting approved is only when the project in which they’re investing has an I-956F approval. If it does not have the approval, the petition just stays in the pending stage till that approval is achieved, which could add months of time into the entire approval flow. So that was the first criteria.

The second criteria is understanding the ratio of funds—how much the developer was bringing in through various means and how much the project is relying on the EB-5 funding itself. Any project that relies more than, I would say, 25% or 30% on the EB-5 funding, that would be a red flag for me.

Third is the transparency in communication between the regional center and the level of documentation they possess with respect to the project.

Fourth is the stage where the project is. Has the project been initiated? Is it an ongoing project, or there’s been no groundwork done yet on the project? It is going to be a paper project rather than an actual project.

So these are some of the evaluations that I did before and during the term of the project itself. The important consideration for me at least was whether I was going in for a loan-based project or an equity-based project. Right from the beginning, I was clear that I was more interested on a loan-based project than on an equity-based project. So these are some of the criteria that I initially looked into while choosing the right RC for me.

Yeah. So if you look at all RCs, the key criteria for them is their sales pitch. What is attractive from a project perspective, and what information is being shared to the investor to convince them? If the information shared is not substantiated with the project document itself, then those kind of RCs are a no-go for me, right?

So giving a brief experience that I had with EB5AN, I approached EB5AN to start with, and I was contacted through a person called Jordan who works for EB5AN, and I had a pretty decent conversation with Jordan. I think it was almost a one-hour conversation where I had several questions on the project itself, and then Jordan was extremely patient enough to address all my queries, and he was quite transparent.

Just for an example, I was asking him the loan term of the project in which I’m going to invest was four plus one plus one. So I was asking him, “Can I exit at the four-year time frame instead of going for the optional one plus one?” So Jordan was quite transparent. He said any builder would want to maximize the loan term to ensure that they have enough time to repay the investors. So he was quite transparent. He didn’t just tell me that “Okay, this is just going to be four years. Yes, you have an option to exit at four years,” or anything as such. He was quite transparent, candid, and I really liked that approach. And I didn’t see the same level of transparencies with other RCs that I engaged with.

Absolutely. As I mentioned before, EB5AN was very thorough with their documentation. So whatever information I wanted, I had it in my inbox probably the next day or two days later. So I had all the information that I needed from a project perspective.

And EB5AN also went an extra mile, and they said that, okay, if I want, I can go and have a physical view of the project itself before I commit myself to this project—which means that they were quite confident on the progress of the project.

That number of sales that have been achieved and the ability to share a quarterly summary report of the sales volume and the project progress—all this were quite attractive for me.

Yeah. There were other two key elements, right? One element was the developer’s portfolio itself: how long they’ve been in business, how many projects they’ve completed successfully, is there any kind of bankruptcy filing by the developer at any given point in time of their existence, the number of years of experience from a developer point of view. So that was one of the key consideration.

The next key consideration is the experience of the RC itself. EB5AN been in business for 13-plus years. So that was also very important to understand that, okay, an RC which has successfully been in the business for this long time with, I would say, almost zero negative reviews about how EB5AN has handled all their investors in the past.

And the other key criteria from a project perspective was to see if the project is already in flight, whether the project has sufficiently fulfilled the EB-5 requirements in terms of the job creation, and all these were key aspects that made me move towards EB5AN and Tamarack project.

For me, there is a basic requirement, as per the USCIS requirement, that for each EB-5 petitioner, there should be at least 10 jobs created and sustained for a period of two years. With respect to EB5AN, on this project itself, they had sufficient cushions, which means that they had created more additional jobs than the actual required number of jobs. So they had this extra cushion, and this cushion ensures that the petition does not see any red flag in getting approval. The Green Card does not see any red flag in getting approval. Or even at the end of the two years’ time, when the conditional Green Card is getting converted to a permanent Green card, the jobs are sustained for the duration of time.

Sure. Actually, the process was very smooth. I didn’t see any hiccup. There was a series of documentation that was shared with me specifically in relation to how do I apply for this project, how do I set up the wire transfer, to whom do I set up the wire transfer, and how do I link my attorney with all the necessary documentation. So it was all quite smooth. I didn’t face any kind of issue in managing this. And I believe I completed all this process within a couple of weeks’ time.

Sure. Before getting into that, I just want to inform you that my petition was approved. I filed in August of 2025, and the petition was approved in the first week of January. So in less than five months, I got my 526E petition approved. Now I’m waiting for the rest of the petition to get approved. So this is a very positive outcome, getting the petition approved in less than five months from the filing date.

No RFEs. Yeah, no RFEs. I was just anxious throughout this four-month period to see if there was going to be any RFEs, but there was no RFPs. USCIS approved my petition before the five-month mark.

Yeah. I understand why mine took around five months is because I split the investment into two phases. I first initially invested $600K, and a couple of months later, then I invested the remaining $200K. Probably that’s the reason why my petition got approved in five months rather than 60 days or 90 days.

Sure. But before getting there, I would like to give some kind of my advice on the EB-5 itself. Firstly, this visa pathway is not for all. The investor will need to understand and evaluate their current situation and needs. And at the same time, they should be with the right frame of mind to accept the risks and outcomes of EB-5.

Secondly, they have to do a very thorough due diligence, ensuring that they take enough time do their own research—if needed, by engaging a financial consultant, at least to ensure that whatever research they are doing is more or less aligned from the financials point of view and from a timeline point of view.

Once they complete their due diligence, then they have to go with an experienced immigration attorney. They cannot go with any attorneys. They have to ensure that they go with some immigration law firm who has been in the business for at least a couple of decades, who knows in and out of all this immigration laws, regulations, and possibly if that immigration law firm has had greater success with EB-5 filing.

The next important advice for the EB-5 prospective applicants is to understand all the financial elements that are associated with such a filing. They have to take into consideration their investment itself as the core component, followed by the legal fees, which is actually substantial. When it comes to EB-5 petition, they have to look at all the filing fees from USCIS—not just the initial filing fees, but two years later, when they convert from a conditional Green Card to a permanent Green Card, there is going to be substantial fees included at that time as well. Then they have to look at all the USCIS fees. They have to look at any RC fees or any financial consultant fees, because all these auxiliary fees themselves are going to be quite substantial from an investor point of view. So they have to take all this into consideration.

Now, when it comes to selection of the project, as I mentioned, if they could possibly … They should start with creating a checklist to do a side-by-side comparison of all the various projects. Understand what are the criteria that they really are focused on, because EB-5, as I mentioned before, has different visa pathways. They have reserved. They have unreserved category, under-reserved. They have targeted employment area. They have high-unemployment area. They have infrastructure investments. So they have to look at what would best suit their needs, their requirements.

And then, when it comes to picking the RC, that’s going to be the most trickiest part. They have to do all thorough due diligence. So talk to multiple RCs. See which RC’s project fits in all their requirements. In my case, EB5AN was great. They fit in all the requirements that I had put forth for myself in the beginning, and that at least enabled me to move faster and cleaner towards my EB-5 journey.

I do a lot of research using those tools. I would say more than 50% of my research relied on using ChatGPT or Gemini. Both offer different results. So sometimes you have to take it with a pinch of salt on what output you get out of these AI tools. But as I said mentioned, that should be probably 30% to 50% of the research. But the remaining 30% or 50% is only when you actually speak to different people—you go to different forums and do your own research. That will give you at least a level of confidence that you’re not purely relying on technology to give you information, but you include the human element as well.

Absolutely, yeah.

Sure. I wouldn’t call it as a recommendation. Rather, I would give references. If somebody approaches me—and I have quite a number of people who have approached me on Reddit asking for different information—what I do is I give them reference, and I share my journey and my experience with them. And I believe the due diligence and addition making to those respective individuals, they shouldn’t feel that I’m being paid to give a reference or recommendation. So I share my journey with all hard timelines, hard facts, and if they’re still interested, they could move forward with whatever reference and recommendations that I give.