This is a recounting of my journey to get my visa to the U.S.. I started looking for an immigration lawyer in August 2017, my visa was validated on February 2019 so the overall process took about a year and a half; but the holdups were not necessarily where you would think they were. I think when it comes to immigration, each case is very different and my case is definitively not a “normal case”; but I think I learned a few things along the way which I’ll try to share here. Note: The E2 visa went through drastic changes this year, please check with a lawyer before doing anything drastic. Lost the plan in Translation September 2017, Jane, my life and business partner and I are entrenched in a small Airbnb room in a Tokyo. Fun's over, we have an idea of what we want to do and a strategy on how to go about it:
Three steps. Devilishly simple. Two years later, (spoiler alert) we still on our way to step two… But, I am today in the US with a lawfully obtained E2 visa. So let’s talk about that. The Devil’s Advocate Our first step was to seek somebody to help us with the process of getting started in the US. So we searched the internet, read review, made some phone calls, put all the preselected names in a hat and pulled a name. His name was Steven, and we got to call him “Yami Steven” (Yami means dark in Japanese) between us; simply because, due to the time difference, I was always talking to him in the middle of the night. Visa War At this point of the story, there’s a fact that you need to know, and this is something that I’m also slowly getting to term with: I am French. So because of Trade deals between France and the U.S it gives us access to a specific visa E2 (Here [https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/fees/treaty.html] is the list of countries that have access to E visas). To get an E2 visa, the requirement are a little fuzzy but it comes down to two things:
Yami Steven broke it down to practical requirements:
The E2 visa is valid for 5 years and can be renewed indefinitely. It is linked to your company though, if you loose ownership of your company you lose you E2 visa status. And the state of your company will be reviewed at every renewal. The Firm Yami Steven convinced me that creating a Delaware C Corp. was the thing to do and so we did. It was not exactly cheap but surprisingly easy. It was all setup before I even set foot in the States. Things I learned since then:
All in all, being a C Corp hasn’t really paid out for us yet. I think it helped with the visa; but I can’t say for sure. So far it has been a lot’s of fees and a lot’s of constraints. If I were to do this again I think I would start with a LLC local to the state I start in and then go on from then. One of the argument from the Lawyer was that changing structure can be a very costly thing to do down the line; but again now I tend to see that as a good problem have. Basically if you are extremely successful you might need to change structure and that might cost money. big deal... I think at the end of the day, why a lot’s of immigration lawyer push to the Delaware C corp. structure is because that’s the one they know, they have all the template ready so it is easier for them to do it that way. The Terminal Now was the time to get into the States and start things for real. So I get a Business visa (that was fairly easy to get) and we catch the first plane to the U.S. Before I go any further, let me just say that so far I only had positive experience with Custom Officers; they asked questions, sometimes kept me a fair amount of time. But they were always courteous and willing to work things out. But I heard horror stories from first account so I keep my finger crossed and I hope I am not cursing myself here. What I learned so far (also from what other people I told me):
A business visa (B1) is meant primarily for short business trips. It is not originally meant to stay long period of time in the state. So Custom officers do get more inquisitive the longer your stay. Because of many different reasons, I have to stay twice the full length of the consecutive 6 months allowed by the B1 and, yes, I had to do some explaining last time I entered the country. I’ll finish by the “Duh!” statement: never, ever, for any reason overextend your stay. This is the ultimate deal breaker; and at this point you becomes an illegal immigrant and it is pretty much game over. Catch 22 The catch happens right at the start: Banks want an address to start a Business Account, Owners want a bank account statement to prove you have money. Credit Score is very important in the States; to keep it simple, credit score companies keep tracks of credit card spending, your loans, if your late for paying bill, etc… basically how responsible you are with money; They use a magic formula and you get a score. That score drives a lot of of business in the U.S, from house rental, loan application to car purchase. When you arrive, you don’t have one. it feels like being a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. What worked for us is to have foreign bank account statement that proved we had money. We were coming from Singapore so the statements were in English.If they are in a foreign language, make sure you have a translation. For the company, I used a mailbox provider (Ipostal) to give my company a physical address. Some people would wince at it (it is a bit too close from a P.O. box from some people comfort) but overall it worked wonders. Overall, if I learned one thing during that process is that a lot come down to individuals. Some people are used to deal with foreigners and some are not. Some will say no just because they don’t know the process or because it is outside their zone of comfort. So it is about keep trying at different places until you find the person that will have experience with your case. So far I’ve always found people who were ready to make things work. The Lease Finding the retail space for our business was the one single most difficult task of this whole endeavor (and it to this day it keeps on giving...). It took us a full year to sign a deal. It was a small adventure on its own I’ll keep for another tale. Following the advice of our lawyer, we threw in four months of advance payment as part of the lease negotiation; as it shows “hard cash investment” in the U.S. Business is not guaranteed So at that time I had a business plan; but overall I’m not a big fan of long, stuffy documents so my plan was a series of one pagers and a financial projection. But apparently they like it stuffy at the visa application center; Yami Steven was very insistent that I should use a professional Business plan writing company to have a “standard” looking plan; so I did. It was not cheap and it is definitively one of those things where I wonder if it was really necessary or not. In any case, the company he recommended: Journey Business Plan (https://www.joorney.com/) was a paramount of professionalism and I was quite impressed with the result (despite my distaste for that type of documents). Employee of the Month As per requirement from our lawyer we needed also at least one employee at the time of the application. We are planning to have employees, our business requires it; but the timing was less than ideal to have somebody on our payroll that early. Now, Jane is from the U.S. but apparently we couldn’t count her in because she was romantically compromised. So what we did is we looked at what skill we would require down the line for our business that we could kind of invest early in. We went for Narrative/Marketing and got lucky that one of our friends, a writer, accepted to be part of the company for a short while. (We ended keeping him for 3 months). Overall it worked all ok, and I think we managed to spend the money in something that we are still using today. Application So that was it; By end of 2018; we had all the pieces of the puzzle assemble and it was about actually applying for the visual. After a weeks of small fumbles and last minute shuffles, Steven put the file together and I submitted it to the U.S. French Consulate. ( I could have tried the Canadian one, but I thought that I’d be better to do it from France). Once the application is submitted, an interview is scheduled. In my case, it was actually quite fast; 2 or 3 weeks if I recall. I boarded the plane back to France; and waited nervously for the day. The Interview I got lucky to have an interviewer that was very open about the process of the interview. He explained that a team was dedicated to read through all the applications; they would collect all the notes, warnings and questions that the interviewer would then look at and ask during the face to face interview. So in short, however it goes, the process is designed so that there is no reason to argue with the interviewer; he is just the messenger. It seems small issues with the file are fairly common, and people are asked sometimes strange requests. In my case, the interviewer casually dropped that there was a problem in the attribution of the companies stocks and that I was not owning 50% of the company (a requirement for the E2 visa); other that than no problem, everything looks good, have a good day, sir. No need to say that I was quite shaken after the interview as it seemed I have been denied for a simple documentation error, but as it happened, I just needed to submit extra documents (our share holder certificates and share holder split) by email and they gave me the green light a few days after. Deep breath… (It felt I have not been breathing for a few days). I needed to wait another few days for my passport to be sent back to me and here I was! with my new brand visa. “Welcome to the States” said the Border Officer on my way back. Conclusion One year and a half in, and with my freshly stamped visa, the feeling is bitter sweet. On one hand, I got my visa; on the other hand I spent way more effort and money on getting the visa that I expected. The main issues I’d say is the visa process forced us to do things out of order; in a way that was definitively not optimized The other overall learning, is that Lawyers will have their one routine, their one formula on how to apply for the visa, and that formula is meant to maximize the chance of success. That is understandable; but at the same time it also make the process very costly. So if money is not a concern, it makes senses to go for that; but I cannot shake the feeling that I jumped a few too many loops and at the end of the day; what really matter is the quality of your proposition: Is your business really going to create value in the States? If you have a good plan and show that you are really committed in the States I think you shouldn’t be worried about getting the visa E2. My visa journey ended in February, Now I’m on my next Journey: Starting a Business! Comments are closed.
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