Being in the position of looking for a visa for my startup, I've informed myself. The way to go right now is to apply for an E2-Visa, which is granted to foreign entrepreneurs owning 50%+ of their company and having raised $100,000 and up.
The $100,000 sum is not written explicitly in the requirements of the visa, however I have talked with immigration lawyers and they've told me at a sum of $100,000 more than 9 out of 10 E2 visas are granted.
I am the author of the movie mentioned in the article. One precision with the E-2 visa is that the funds must come from your own pocket and you must be able to prove the source of the funds is legitimate (how you earned the money). So it is still more of an investor visa than entrepreneur.
You said it must come from my own pocket, however my impression was that it can come from anywhere, be it an American angel investor, a Suisse one, an American VC, Israeli VC or my uncle doesn't matter.
PS: the only way I would see feasible would be if that person made a monetary donation to you (that money legitimately becomes your), and then you had a private contract with that person to give them shares in the company, but 1. this may run fool of the treaty laws, and 2. I doubt many investors would be willing to do that.
Hi, Author here.
The entrepreneur visa which I describe does not yet exist.
The bill (which including the visa) passed the Senate in June and has yet to be voted on in Congress.
The E2 treaty investor visa is what I know the closest existing visa.
I hope this doesn't sound snarky or mean, but you might want to run a spell checker over your posts in the future. Some of the errors stood out strongly enough that they really interrupted the flow of the writing (which was otherwise structured quite nicely.)
Being in the position of looking for a visa for my startup, I've informed myself. The way to go right now is to apply for an E2-Visa, which is granted to foreign entrepreneurs owning 50%+ of their company and having raised $100,000 and up.
The $100,000 sum is not written explicitly in the requirements of the visa, however I have talked with immigration lawyers and they've told me at a sum of $100,000 more than 9 out of 10 E2 visas are granted.