Bay Area Regional Center | USCIS EB-5 | eb5

Our Region

Bay Area Regional Center specifies investment opportunities within five counties sharing a common regional economy, interstate system, and connection to the San Francisco Bay. These five counties are:

Alameda
Contra Costa
Solano
San Francisco
San Mateo

The potential for successful industry and development in this five county geographic region is tremendous. Lenny Mendonca, Chairman of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, describes the area as “one of the world’s greatest regional economies benefiting from pre-eminent knowledge-based industries, with competitive strength flowing from an unmatched culture of entrepreneurship, world-leading research institutions, and the nation's best educated and most highly skilled workforce.”

Bay Area Regional Center projects are intended to create positive economic change throughout the five county regions, particularly through investment in designated Targeted Employment Areas (TEAs), defined by USCIS as areas with unemployment of at least 150% of the national average.

As specified by the requirements of the EB-5 program section 203 b, investments made within TEAs will be $500,000, while those made outside TEAs will be $1 million. With emphasis on TEAs, Bay Area Regional Center will empower investors with the lower threshold of investment and will enrich those areas with a greater positive impact.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit System provides service to 43 stations over approximately 104 miles of track throughout Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties.

In accordance to Title 8, Code of Federal Regulations Section 204.6(i), the California Employment Development Department has been designated to identify the cities, counties, metropolitan statistical areas, and geopolitical subdivisions (census tracts) that meet the “high unemployment” definition and therefore qualify for the $500,000 minimum investment threshold. While rate changes monthly for cities and counties, the qualifying census tract unemployment rates are identified at one point in time and published annually.