IN THIS GUIDE · Costing a corporate-sponsored employee who is bringing a spouse and one child
Start with the GOLD CARD eligibility and application overview
The three-person calculation
Three people means three nonrefundable US$15,000 processing fees, or US$45,000. The gifts are not uniform: the corporate principal's gift is US$2 million, while the joining spouse and the unmarried child under 21 are each US$1 million. Gifts therefore total US$4 million, and program payments come to US$4,045,000. Recurring corporate charges and every other cost of relocating a family sit outside that number. All figures are stated in U.S. dollars and none is described as refundable.
Dependants are included at the start here too
The requirement that each joining spouse and unmarried child under 21 be considered in the initial application applies to corporate families as well. A company cannot sponsor the employee now and add the household to the same application later. That makes the family question part of the approval decision rather than a detail for relocation to handle afterwards, and it should be settled before the online application is submitted.
Ongoing corporate charges on top
Beyond the one-time payments, the corporate program is described as carrying a 1% annual maintenance charge and a 5% transfer fee. Those belong in the same paper as the gifts, because a committee approving US$4,045,000 should see the recurring obligation attached to it. Terms can be revised, so ask counsel to confirm the current wording, what each percentage applies to, and which events trigger the transfer fee.
Who pays which part of the family bill
Split the US$4,045,000 in writing before anything is filed. Some employers fund the principal only and leave the two dependant packages to the employee; others fund the household in full. Either is a choice, but it needs to be stated with figures, together with what happens if the employee resigns, if vetting fails, or if the family's composition changes. Have counsel and a tax adviser review the arrangement on both sides.
Put the eligibility question in front of the arithmetic
A three-person calculation is the visible part of an employer's decision and the least informative. Three things should reach an approval committee before any figure does. First, an assessment of whether the employee's record could support a determination under EB-1 or EB-2, since that determination must still be made and remains subject to visa availability, and no amount of corporate funding supplies it. Second, a confidential screening of all three people, because each is assessed on their own admissibility and the household's outcome is shaped by whichever record contains the difficulty. A dependant's history is as capable of ending the exercise as the employee's, and it is the one nobody thinks to review. Third, confirmation of the current terms and applicable amounts from official sources rather than from a summary prepared earlier for another purpose, since neither the terms nor the figures are fixed features of the world and a budget built on last year's understanding is a budget built on nothing. Sequenced this way, the financial analysis means something when it arrives. Sequenced the other way, a committee approves a number and discovers afterwards that it was pricing a possibility. Hypothetical example: a company's first paper contains a detailed multi-year schedule and no view on the spouse's or child's positions, and the review that follows changes the recommendation entirely.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.