Which family members can be included on a Petrolia investor's EB-5 petition?

The investor's spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one may be included as derivatives and receive conditional permanent residence alongside the investor. Age is assessed under the applicable statutory provisions rather than simply by the birthday, and children who marry cease to qualify regardless of age.

Derivative status is generous and time-limited

This is the route where an entire household moves together, which is much of its appeal, and the timing questions are correspondingly important. A child must be unmarried and under twenty-one, and because these cases can take years, a child who was comfortably within the limit at filing may not be at approval. Statutory provisions exist to address part of that delay, and how they apply to an individual case is a question for counsel rather than an assumption for a planning document.

Two further distinctions are worth stating plainly. Conditional permanent residence is not citizenship, and it does not ripen into citizenship on its own; naturalization is a separate process with its own requirements. And permanent residence for a derivative depends on the principal's case succeeding, including at the stage where conditions are removed two years later.