E-2 visa

There is no dollar amount that qualifies for an E-2, and there never was one.

E-2 lets a national of a treaty country come to the United States to direct and develop a business they have invested in substantially. The question everyone arrives with is how much, and the regulation does not answer it with a number: substantial is proportional to what the business costs, and the scale runs the opposite way to intuition. This page walks through what the visa requires, including the two things it does not do, with the citations.

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Who you would be working with, and how the work runs

The employment-based categories on this site are all handled here, and they are handled by the same attorney. A company with an H-1B question, a labor certification and a green card to plan does not need three firms, three intakes and three explanations of its own org chart.

There is one attorney at this firm. The person who reads your documents is the person who writes the petition and signs the filing, and two paralegals work the file alongside me. That is not a service promise, it is the shape of the firm, and it is the reason there is nobody for a question to get handed to.

Every matter carries a written checklist: what I need from you, what I am working on now, and what comes next. The filing is built from your own documents, because the facts that decide these cases are specific to one company and one role and no template holds them. The person the case is filed for gets a portal account of their own for documents and status, which keeps their personal papers out of a shared inbox. Fees are flat per matter and staged, quoted in three separate lines: the attorney fee, government filing fees, and other costs.

E-2 at a glance

A treaty has to exist

Nationals of a treaty country only, with at least fifty percent of the business owned by them. The list is published at travel.state.gov.
Substantial is a proportion

No dollar threshold. The cheaper the business, the higher the share of its cost the investment has to be.
Money at risk, already committed

Funds sitting in an account are not an investment.
Not a green card, not dual intent

Renewable while the business qualifies, and the applicant intends to depart when the status ends. The E-2 spouse can work.

Is this your situation?

If one of these is close, the category is worth checking properly.

You are buying or starting a business in the United States and you hold a treaty country passport.: That is the ordinary E-2. The first question is not the amount. It is whether your country of nationality has a qualifying treaty at all, because the list is specific and it is published, and a country that is not on it cannot be argued onto it.
The company abroad wants to send a manager to the U.S. affiliate, and L-1 does not fit.: An E-2 employee visa is a real alternative. It requires the employee to hold the same treaty nationality as the enterprise, and to be coming in an executive or supervisory capacity or with skills essential to the operation. It does not require the year abroad that L-1 requires. That route has its own page here.
You have money to invest and you are treating E-2 as a green card.: Read the last block on this page before going further. E-2 can be extended indefinitely while the business qualifies, and it is still a nonimmigrant visa. Nothing in E-2 converts into anything. It is a planning problem rather than a legal one, which means it is solvable if it is faced early.

“Funds sitting in an account are not an investment.”

The test

What the law actually requires

All of it is checkable. The classification is INA 101(a)(15)(E)(ii), the consular requirements are at 22 CFR 41.51(b), and the State Department works from 9 FAM 402.9.

Four tests, all four

22 CFR 41.51(b) sets the consular requirements and 9 FAM 402.9 is the State Department's working manual. Every one of the four has to be met, and none of them is a dollar figure.

All4

treaty nationality: the investor's, and at least fifty percent of the business, traced to individuals
substantial: in proportion to the total cost of buying or establishing the business, on an inverted scale
at risk and irrevocably committed: subject to loss, already spent or escrowed, from a lawful and documented source
real, active and more than marginal: producing goods or services for profit, with more than a minimal living in it

The four are tested together, and the proportion test runs the opposite way to intuition.

Substantial is a proportion, and the money has to be at risk

22 CFR 41.51(b)(9) does not set an amount. It asks whether the investment is substantial in relation to the total cost of purchasing an established enterprise or establishing a new one, whether it is sufficient to ensure the investor's financial commitment to the successful operation of the enterprise, and whether it is of a magnitude that supports the likelihood that the investor will develop and direct it. The scale is inverted: a low-cost business needs a very high percentage of its cost invested, and an expensive one can be substantial at a lower percentage. The capital must also be subject to loss if the business fails and already committed: signed leases, purchased equipment, paid franchise fees, escrowed purchase funds released on visa issuance. Uncommitted funds and loans secured by the assets of the enterprise itself do not count, and the source of funds must be documented and lawful.

The business must be real and operating, and more than marginal

22 CFR 41.51(b)(8) requires a real and active commercial or entrepreneurial undertaking producing goods or services for profit, and it must meet the legal requirements for doing business in its own jurisdiction in the United States. An idle investment, undeveloped land, or funds held speculatively do not qualify. Under 22 CFR 41.51(b)(10) the enterprise must also not be marginal: it must have the present or future capacity to generate more than enough income to provide a minimal living for the investor and family, and where that capacity is in the future, the business plan must show it arriving within a reasonable time, which the Department of State reads as about five years from when the investor commences the normal business activity of the enterprise.

What E-2 does not do, and this is the part to read twice

E-2 is a nonimmigrant visa. Unlike L-1, it carries no dual intent: 22 CFR 41.51(b)(1)(iii) requires the applicant to intend to depart the United States when the E-2 status ends, and consular officers ask about it. A green card filing does not by itself end an E-2 case, and how far that holds depends on which decision is being made. Under 8 CFR 214.2(e)(5), an application for initial admission, change of status, or extension of stay in E classification may not be denied solely because a labor certification has been approved or an immigrant visa petition has been filed or approved. The visa is not on that list: at a consulate the officer works from the State Department's manual, which asks an applicant who is already the beneficiary of an immigrant petition to satisfy the officer that the intent to depart is real. E-2 can be renewed for as long as the enterprise continues to qualify, and that is not the same thing as a path. On the other side of the ledger, the E-2 spouse is authorized to work incident to status.

Where the case is filed changes what happens. A person abroad applies at a consulate, whose E visa unit publishes its own procedures and often its own document list, and the consulate decides. A person already in the United States in another status can ask USCIS for a change of status on Form I-129 under 8 CFR 214.2(e), which produces status but not a visa: the visa itself still has to be issued at a post before the next entry. And the fifty percent ownership test is continuous: a new investor, a share transfer, a naturalization or a restructure can change whether the enterprise still qualifies, and a renewal reopens the question.

The honest part

What is hard about it

Two things an investor should know before the money moves.

The order is wrong in most people's heads

The instinct is to get the visa and then buy the business. The requirement runs the other way: the funds have to be irrevocably committed and at risk before the application is credible. Structuring that safely, through a purchase agreement conditioned on visa issuance with funds in escrow, is a legal and commercial design problem, and it is the single most useful thing to get right early.

Marginality is decided on a document nobody enjoys writing

Where present income does not already clear the bar, the business plan carries the case. It has to be specific enough for a stranger to test: what is sold, to whom, at what price, with what staffing, on what timeline. A plan written to sound optimistic and a plan written to be checked look very different, and only one of them is evidence.

The clock

Where the calendar comes from

An E-2 runs on a clock that belongs to a consulate or to USCIS, depending on where it is filed, and both publish their own current numbers. Check those rather than a figure typed onto a law firm page.

The consulate publishes its own E visa procedure

Each embassy or consulate with an E visa unit publishes its own instructions, its own document list and often its own appointment route for E cases, and those differ from post to post. The State Department also publishes appointment wait times by post at travel.state.gov. Read the post that will actually decide the case.

USCIS publishes I-129 processing times for the inside-the-country route

A change of status is filed on Form I-129, and the processing-times tool at egov.uscis.gov reports what each office is currently taking. Premium processing on Form I-907 buys a commitment to act inside a published number of days, and acting includes a request for evidence as much as an approval. A change of status produces status and not a visa.

The reciprocity schedule sets how long the visa itself lasts

The validity period and the number of entries on an issued E-2 visa are set by the reciprocity schedule for the applicant's country, published at travel.state.gov, and they vary widely by nationality. That is separate from the period of stay granted at entry, which is set by Customs and Border Protection. Two different clocks, often confused.

Each of those pages belongs to the agency that runs that stage and carries the date it was last updated.

The sequence

Where the time actually goes

Here is the order of a case in this category: who acts at each step, and whose clock is running. Two of those clocks are different animals, and telling them apart is most of what people are really asking. A period fixed by regulation is the same this year and next. A backlog is a fact about a queue on one particular day, so this page does not print one. It hands you the agency page where the current figure lives.

You
You and your attorney build the record: the evidence, the letters, the exhibits, the petition itself.
No published figure
This is the one stretch on the list that no agency measures. It moves with what already exists and what still has to be created.
One of these, not both
Which route applies depends on where you are when you file, not on preference. And changing status inside the United States gives you E-2 status without an E-2 visa, so leaving the country later still means a consulate.
USCIS
USCIS decides the petition.
Set by the backlogForm I-129
The figure USCIS publishes is how long it took to finish eight in ten decided cases over the previous six months. It is a record of what already happened, not a forecast for the case in front of you.
Premium processing
Premium processing is a paid USCIS service available on this form. For I-129 in this classification, USCIS states a period of 15 business days.
That period stops and starts over from the beginning if USCIS issues a request for evidence, so it buys a faster look at the file rather than a shorter case.
Eligibility is set per form and per classification, and USCIS can change it.
USCIS processing timesCheck the current figure at egov.uscis.gov
or
Department of State
The consulate schedules an interview and decides the visa application.
No published figureForm DS-160
Each post keeps its own appointment calendar, so there is no single national figure for this step.

Sources and definitions

No published figure: No agency publishes a time for this step. Anyone quoting you one is guessing.
Set by the backlog: How long this step takes depends on the agency's queue that month. The current figure is on the agency's own page, which is why it is not repeated here.

USCIS processing times: Pick the form, the classification and the office. What USCIS posts there is how long it took to finish eight in ten decided cases over the previous six months, refreshed monthly.
USCIS premium processing: Which forms and classifications are eligible, what it costs, and the period USCIS states for each of them.

USCIS is U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that decides petitions.
The Department of State runs the consulates and publishes the monthly visa bulletin.

Every stage, form number and period below comes from the agency that owns that step. None of it is this firm's estimate, and none of it is a prediction about your case.

Sources last checked August 16, 2026.

The links go to live government pages, so what you find there will be newer than that.

The employer page, for the whole track

How employer-sponsored work is structured at this firm, the categories that sit beside E-2, and where the calendar for each one comes from.

Read the employer page
L-1, when the business abroad already exists

If there is an established company overseas and the person has worked there for a qualifying year, the intracompany transfer is often the better door, and it carries dual intent where E-2 does not.

Read the L-1 page
What it costs

Fees here are always quoted in three separate lines: the attorney fee, government filing fees, and other costs. The published numbers live on one page.

See the full fee breakdown

Ask what the business needs before you ask what the visa needs.

A consultation on an E-2 is mostly a reading: the passport and the ownership chain, what the business actually costs to buy or to build, and what the plan says will happen. I will tell you how I read it, including if the honest answer is that the structure has to change first, or that a different category fits the family better.

Two ways to start, and who you sit with

The first is a free intake with my team. The second is the paid consultation, and that one is with me.

Intake

15 minutes · Free

My paralegal team, not me

A short conversation to hear what is going on and get it written down properly. My paralegals ask about your status, your dates, your employer if there is one, and what you have already tried. By the end of it you know what a consultation with me would cover and whether it is worth booking one yet.

This step is intake and scheduling. My paralegals do not give legal advice, do not tell you whether you qualify for anything, and do not recommend a visa category. That part is mine, and it happens in the attorney consultation.
Attorney consultation

60 minutes · $150

If you go on to retain the firm for the matter the consultation covered, the fee is credited toward your fee for that case. The credit does not expire.

Joe Kwon, the attorney who would handle the case

This is where the legal discussion happens. You tell me what you have and what you are trying to do, and I tell you what I think, including when I think the answer is no. Some of these end with me not taking the case. That is a real result of the call, not a failure of it. I read what you send before we sit down, so the whole session goes to your question. The consultation runs as a video call, from wherever you are.

Book a consultation See the full fee breakdown

Booking does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Immigration benefits are decided by government officers who apply the law to the record in front of them, and many of them are discretionary. No attorney can promise you an approval, and anyone who does is telling you what you want to hear. What good lawyering controls is whether your case is complete, specific, and internally consistent, so that approving it is the officer's easiest path.