Do not treat a conditional protection as cash already available. Family eligibility and residence stages remain separate.
Plan for the real exposure
Record household resources without assuming repayment on a fixed date. Review relationships and child-age questions independently of the financial description.
Whichever route is chosen, the sequence runs from investor petition to an immigrant visa abroad or eligible adjustment, subject to visa availability, then conditional residence and a later petition to remove conditions, ordinarily filed in the ninety days before the second anniversary. Applicable age rules and individual admissibility still matter, and neither a signed investment contract nor the principal’s petition approval itself grants family residence. Derivative eligibility depends on the child being unmarried and under 21, and the practical difficulty is that immigrant categories can involve waiting, sometimes years, depending on the applicant's country of chargeability. A spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one are included on the single qualifying investment as derivatives and receive the same two-year conditional permanent residence as the principal, which carries the right to live and work, so no additional work permission is in issue. A derivative's eligibility is assessed at points in the process rather than continuously, and a child's position can change with the passage of time in a way a spouse's does not, which makes the calendar part of the analysis rather than an administrative afterthought.