No. EB-5 requires full-time positions for qualifying U.S. workers, meaning at least thirty-five hours a week in permanent roles. Seasonal or intermittent workers, however many, do not count, and the investor and his family are excluded from the ten.
Redesign the workforce around permanent positions
The statute and regulations define the required employment as full-time positions for qualifying employees, and USCIS treats intermittent, temporary, seasonal or transient work as outside that definition. A cattle-feeding operation naturally runs with peaks, but it also runs every day of the year, so the business plan should identify the roles that are permanent by nature: feed-truck drivers, a mill operator, pen riders retained year-round, a maintenance hand, a bookkeeper, and a yard foreman. The plan must show that at least ten such positions, filled by U.S.
citizens, U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents or other immigrants lawfully authorized to work, will be created within the period allowed after the investment. The investor, the investor's spouse and children, and workers in nonimmigrant status do not count.
If the operation is bought as a going concern rather than built, the jobs already there count only under the rules for troubled businesses or where the investment expands employment; the plan must be specific about which. A direct EB-5 case counts only direct payroll jobs, unlike a regional-center project, which may count indirect employment under an economic model.