EB-5 Targeted Employment Area · Free tool
Does this address qualify as a TEA? Answer in seconds.
TEA Vigil screens any U.S. address against both qualifying paths — rural and high-unemployment — including the adjacent-tract combinations most tools make you work out by hand. Check one address, paste a list, or upload a CSV, and download a report with the census tract mapped.
Paste a full address — street, city, state and ZIP on one line.
One address per line. Add a label with Name | address.
Columns street,city,state,zip — or a single address
column. Optional id and name.
The two paths
An address qualifies if it clears either test
Most screening tools check one path well and the other loosely. TEA Vigil evaluates both on every address and tells you which one carried it — or that neither did.
High unemployment
The tract's unemployment rate must reach 150% of the national average. Critically, the petitioner may combine the tract with any or all directly adjacent tracts — so an address can qualify even when its own tract does not.
— or —
weighted avg(tract + adjacent) ≥ 1.50 × national
We search the combination that maximises the labour-force-weighted average, then report exactly which tracts were used.
Rural
Rural status has nothing to do with unemployment. The address must sit outside every Metropolitan Statistical Area and outside any city or town of 20,000 or more people at the 2020 census.
AND
largest containing city/town < 20,000
Both conditions, not either. We report the MSA (if any) and the largest municipality containing the point with its population, so you can see the margin.
What you get
Built for the work, not the demo
One address or two hundred
Type a single address, paste a list straight from an email, or upload a CSV. No other free TEA tool takes more than one address at a time.
The combinations, worked out
We evaluate the adjacent-tract combinations for you and name the tracts used, rather than leaving you to click neighbouring tracts one at a time.
A PDF you can hand over
Every screening produces a report with the tract and its neighbours mapped, the underlying rates, the data vintage, and the methodology — one address or the whole batch.
No half answers
Rural and high-unemployment are evaluated on every address, with the supporting numbers shown either way — including how far a near miss actually was.
Every result is attributable
Each result carries its ACS vintage and screening date. Verdicts shift between vintages, so a report without a date is not worth much.
Nothing to sign up for
Batch screening and PDF reports are free without registration. Published as a resource by Path2Immigration, an immigration law firm.
Methodology
ACS 5-year data — the series USCIS references
Some TEA maps blend ACS tract data with more recent BLS county estimates. That produces newer-looking numbers, and sometimes qualifies more tracts — but it is not what USCIS tabulates at adjudication. TEA Vigil is deliberately ACS-only.
Where the numbers come from
- Census Geocoder — address to 2020 census tract
- ACS 5-year, table B23025 — labour force and unemployment by tract
- TIGERweb — tract adjacency, MSA and municipal boundaries
- 2020 Decennial, P1_001N — city and town populations
What this is not
- A screening estimate — not a TEA determination
- USCIS decides at I-526E filing on its own tabulation as of that date
- Results near the 150% line deserve an economist's review
- The rural test counts towns as well as incorporated places, which is correct for New England; review that assumption elsewhere
For firms & projects
Put this checker on your own site
The tool is free to use here. If you would like it embedded on your firm's or project's site with your own branding — or API access to run screenings inside your own systems — that is licensed annually.
Email rajesh@path2immigration.com, or leave your address and we will get in touch.