Investment is the treaty investor’s placing of capital, including funds and/or other assets, at risk in the commercial sense with the objective of generating a profit. The capital must be:
A substantial amount of capital is:
A bona fide enterprise refers to a real, active, and operating commercial or entrepreneurial undertaking which produces services or goods for profit. It must meet applicable legal requirements for doing business within its jurisdiction.
On average, it takes 4 – 12 weeks for Bay Immigration Law to prepare an E-2 case to file with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, or with a U.S. Consulate abroad. Depending on the particulars of the sources of your capital, and on the requirements of the business (whether you are purchasing an existing business or registering a new one). In general, the process is as follows:
We have an introductory phone call and go over your plans, requirements, and the documentation/information that will be necessary to proceed. We send out an Engagement Letter establishing the Attorney-Client Privileged relationship, and outlining the legal and government costs for the preparation and filing of the case.
Once the Engagement Letter has been returned to us, we will make a formal request for documentation and information to begin preparation of the case.
Depending on whether you are purchasing an existing business or starting a new business, we will take the necessary steps to ensure that you have or can provide the necessary documentation to establish the appropriate petitioner (your company) for the case. If you are starting a new business, we will prepare a detailed business plan to outline the expected market entry and growth, hiring plan, and pro forma financials. Once an initial draft is complete, we will iterate over the draft with you, as necessary.
On a continuing basis we work with you to collect the information and documentation to fulfill the submission requirements for the Forms, Letter of Support and Packet.
Once the packet is complete, we prepare a physical packet (in duplicate) at our Palo Alto office and ship it to USCIS (if you are in the United States and filing as a Change of Status), or to you directly (if you are outside of the United States and are attending a consular interview for your E-2).
There is no regulatory mandated minimum amount, however we recommend that the amount be at least $75,000. This has, in practice, been accepted by USCIS to be a substantial and sufficient amount of capital, and while we have submitted and won E-2 cases with investment amounts that were as low as $50,000, we certainly do not recommend amounts less than $75,000.
Investment is the treaty investor’s placing of capital, including funds and/or other assets (of the investor and not obtained by any criminal activity), at risk in the commercial sense with the objective of generating a profit. The funds must be irrevocably committed to the enterprise.
Yes. If you have capital assets (e.g. machinery, office equipment, real estate, etc.) that would be useful for your E-2 company’s business model, then the fair market value of these assets can be used as part of the qualifying investment in securing the E-2 visa.
It could, yes. Did you invest capital at the start of the business? If so, then it would certainly qualify. If you didn’t have to invest capital and the business grew organically, then we would have to take a look at the specifics of the business model, and the company’s financials.