International tuition vs. Resident tuition: The financial case for an EB-5 application before your child turns 18

Indian families come to us about EB-5 at very different stages of planning their child’s U.S. college education. Some come to us when the child is in Class 9 or 10, long before SAT preparation has begun. Others arrive much later, after the child is already in college, when an H-1B has not come through or a job offer has been withdrawn. Both groups bring the same capital and the same intent. They do not bring the same amount of time. After 15 years at U.S. Immigration Fund, what most often separates the two is when they started planning.

Start with tuition. International students at U.S. public universities pay 2.5-3.5 times what residents pay for the same degree.

For two children over four years at a school like Michigan, that gap alone adds up to more than ₹2.5 crore, before housing, health insurance, or living costs. For Indian families, this outflow also has to fit inside the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, which caps each remitter at $250,000 per financial year and turns four years of non-resident tuition into a multi-year capital plan rather than a single annual decision.

Families looking at that figure often ask whether a green card would bring it down. A green card alone does not reduce tuition to the resident rate. In most U.S. states, in-state tuition depends on the parent’s domicile, not the student’s immigration status, and the family must have lived in the state for 12 months before classes start. The University of California goes further: a student who moved to California mainly to attend UC may not qualify as a resident even with a green card. Establishing domicile in a U.S. state takes its own time and effort, and for most Indian families, it runs on a different timeline from the EB-5 filing.

The higher value of a green card appears after the student is already enrolled, not on the tuition bill.

An F-1 student spends four years making choices that carry a financial cost the family does not always see. Which subject the child studies is narrowed by which fields qualify for the 24-month STEM OPT extension. Which company they can join is narrowed to firms willing to sponsor an H-1B visa, which usually means larger companies with formal sponsorship programmes. The H-1B itself is a lottery: only about one in three applicants were selected in fiscal year 2026, so even four strong academic years may not be enough to stay in the country. A permanent resident faces none of these limits. They can choose any subject, work for any employer who hires them, and apply for federal student aid like any U.S. student.

For EB-5 to deliver this outcome for the child, the family must file the petition early enough that the child is still under 21 when a visa becomes available. Children are included on the parents’ petition as derivatives, and the age limit is firm. A family that starts the conversation when the child is 17 typically has time to file and reach the visa stage while the child is still covered. A family that starts at 20 often does not.

For an Indian family planning a child’s U.S. college education, the cost of late EB-5 planning is not just the four years of international tuition. It also includes the narrower set of subjects the child ends up studying, the narrower set of employers they can join, and the H-1B lottery they must win to remain in the country. These costs accumulate over four years and are very difficult to reverse once the child is already on an F-1 visa. How much of any of this a family avoids depends entirely on when they started planning.

(The author is President and Chief Marketing Officer, U.S. Immigration Fund. Views are personal.)