How can I protect my personal information and investment records in an EB-5 application?

There is no requirement that you use a migration agency. You could work directly with a qualified EB-5 lawyer (bound by confidentiality). The investment records are for the U.S. immigration adjudicators to determine whether or not you qualify to do the investment. You could sign a confidentiality agreement with the regional center that they not share your investment information with anyone other than the U.S. government.

Your EB-5 Immigration attorney will prepare a Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreement to be signed by the Migration Agency and the Regional Center, to keep your source of personal funds documentation confidential.

The U.S.-based regional center should be able to use its best professional efforts to protect your private and confidential personal information. The migration agency would not be subject to U.S. laws, but it would be subject to the laws, if any, in your home country about protecting such information.

You are encouraged to hire a US-based EB-5 immigration attorney who will be bound by attorney-client privilege and confidentiality rules and will keep your information private. Migration agents are not attorneys and are not subject to such requirements. Regional centers do not get a copy of your I-526 petition. An attorney submits it directly to USCIS. A regional center will generally only receive a USCIS issued receipt notice and a USCIS issued approval notice for your case from your attorney.

You can have all parties sign a nondisclosure agreement ("NDA").

Before you invest in an EB-5 project associated with a regional center, you will review and sign numerous documents related to your investment. The documents should include a provision that the regional center agrees to keep your personal information and information about your investment confidential. A migration agent may also ask you to review and sign documents before he or she will provide service to you. These documents may include a provision that the migration agent agrees to keep your personal information and information about your investment confidential.

The migration agency and Regional Center should keep confidential your private information contained in your EB-5 petition and other information you provide to them. Other than their promise to do so, I am not certain what else you could do to ensure same. Generally speaking, there would be no reason why they would not do so; however, if they breach that and you are in the U.S., you could always sue them if you could show any damage. Once the EB-5 petition is filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS), the CIS will clearly keep that confidential and no third party has the right to access that information.

All the regional centers make the investor sign the Non-disclosure Agreement so that you do not share their projects with others, but most of them do not have any liability attached to them in case your information gets accidentally disclosed. With migration agencies, it gets even worse as many are not lawyers or licensed investment brokers whose fiduciary duty to you require that they protect your information. Also, depending on which country you are from, you may not have any right to privacy that would give you right to sue. Attorneys in U.S. are bound by the attorney-client privilege and they must protect the information of their clients.

The law requires the information be kept private. I have never heard of a case where the information was released to a member of the public.

Generally, information regarding the EB-5 Petition of any investor is supposed to be private and treated as a confidential matter. As a matter of fact, an investor can simply tell both the migration agency and every party to the processing of the petition to treat his or her information as a confidential matter. The only time your information may be divulged is if there are legal and law enforcement purposes for it to be disclosed. Otherwise, let your migration agency, regional center and the attorney know your preference for privacy.

If you are working with a qualified EB-5 investment immigration attorney and registered broker-dealer they can assure that your privacy is protected. This protection is both assumed and should be part of any agreement you reach with the Regional Center and the professionals you retain.

This question would be better answered by the specific regional center that you are planning on investing in. Having said that, some EB-5 regional centers have confidentiality agreements that protect the investors from having their information given to third parties. They have to give your information to USCIS for obvious reasons, but other than that, there are regional centers that offer that confidentiality agreement. You should consult with an immigration lawyer before investing in any EB-5 regional center.

Unless the migration agency is an attorney, nothing requires them to keep your information confidential so you should negotiate this. Typically the regional center does not get your personal information from the EB-5 filing only your attorney.