NON-IMMIGRANT (TEMPORARY) VISAS

E-VISA

Are you interested in coming to America to start and work in a business?

You and your employees may be eligible for an E visa if:

1.    A treaty exists between the United States and your home/treaty country and you are entering solely to:

a.    Carry on international trade between the United States and your home/treaty country (E-1 visa) or,

b.    Develop and direct that enterprise in which you have or are in the process of investing a substantial amount of capital (E-2 visa).


2.    E visas are also available when a company is at least 50% owned by a treaty national and the company wishes to petition for key employees, who are also treaty nationals, and who will become executives, supervisors or, employees "essential to the efficient operation of the enterprise."

An example of a successful E-1 treaty trader petition might be a petition by a person who carries on substantial trade between his home country and the United States, in nearly any type of product, and he or she wishes to move his/her headquarters to the United States.

An example of a successful E-2 treaty investor might be a the prospective owner of a restaurant or, any other business, in which the investor has invested a substantial amount of money and the enterprise will generate more than just a living for the investor.

E-1/E-2 COUNTRIES

TREATIES CONTAINING TRADER AND TREATY INVESTOR PROVISIONS IN EFFECT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER COUNTRIES

(TL:VISA_168; 08_08_1997)

      COUNTRY  CLASSIFICATION

 *1 Denmark does not apply to the Faroe Islands of Greenland. Does not apply to Greenland. 

*2 France E-1 also applies to the departments of Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana and Reunion.

*3 Japan E-1 applicable to the Bonin Islands and to the Ryukyu Islands.

*4  Denmark E-1 applicable to Aruba and Netherlands Antilles.

*5  Norway Does not apply to Svalbard (Spitzbergen and certain lesser islands).

*6 Spain the treaty providing for E-1 is applicable to all territories.

*7 United Kingdom the E-1 applies only to British territory in Europe (the British Isles (except the Republic of Ireland), the Channel Islands and Gibraltar) and to "inhabitants" of such territory.

*8 Yugoslavia for purposes of the E-1, the U.S. view is that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) has dissolved and that the successors that formerly made up the SFRY_Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Slovenia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro)_continue to be bound by the treaty in force with the SFRY at the time of dissolution