Patrick Findaro here, co-founder partner at Visa Franchise. Today, I just wanted to give an update on an alternative for those that are frustrated with the long wait time to get a B1 B2 visa. We’ve had a few clients now engage our services because it was gonna take one, two, potentially even more years to get a standard B-1/B-2 visa to the U.S.

E2 Visa Alternative to B1 B2 Visa Given Significant Delays

We’ve had a lot of clients, a couple of clients I should say, that have business interests in the United States where their B-1 visa has expired, and they’re no longer able to just renew it via mail or other means in the consulates that they’ve reached out to through their immigration attorney. They’ve identified the E-2 visa as a better alternative for them to come to the U.S. in a month, two months, six months instead of waiting, could be two years depending on where you live.

E2 Visa Alternative for B1 Visa

Types Of Visas

I think this could be a good opportunity for those nationals that don’t have a Visa Waiver Program with the United States.

You can see there are many countries like Albania, Argentina, Romania, that don’t have a visa waiver with the U.S. That means they have to get essentially a B-1/B-2 visa to even visit the United States or some other U.S. visa category to legally enter the United States. In countries like Australia, Austria, their citizens are part of ESTA. Canada has their own Visa Waiver Program that’s unique to Canada.

This opportunity is more for those E-2 countries that are all listed here, where you can see on my screen it’s marked N where there’s no ESTA, no visa waiver.

Going through a couple of examples. Chile has ESTA, but that’s an opportunity where it’s taking 70 days roughly to get an E-2 visa interview, while in other visa categories it’s taking significantly more time. But if we go to say Mexico, which is now by the way a 48-month visa that they grant for E-2 visa investors.

Visa Appointment

I wanna show you how long it’s taking for a Mexican national to get an E-2 visa interview. And we’ve had clients recently from Mexico apply in Mexico City, as well as Ciudad Juarez. Mexico City. I believe, just for the past year or so has been accepting E-2 visa applicants. So, taking a look, this is the U.S. State Department website.

I’ll send a link to everyone here. I’ll post it in the comment now. And you can check how long it takes to get a visa appointment at any consulate. There are hundreds of consulates around the world. And we’ll show you a few different categories.

Let’s just zoom in here. So, if you’re a Mexican national applying or you’re a resident of Mexico applying out of Mexico City, you wanna get a visitor visa. They’re not even providing the service. You have to have an emergency case. Could be life or death that would warrant you need to get a visitor visa to the U.S.

All other non-immigrant visas which would include the E-2 visa, 23 days. So, if you’re a Mexican national that your B-1/B-2 visa’s expired, or it’s gonna expire in the next year, and you have the capital to invest in a U.S. business. If you’re able to physically move here and work in the day-to-day, $100k, maybe more.

If you need to have a full-time manager because you’re gonna be traveling back and forth, it’s gonna take $200,000 or more to have the margin for that full-time manager.

For Mexicans that wanna come to the U.S. and travel freely, maybe they have a home in San Diego or Texas or here in South Florida, it could be a good alternative for you and your family to get an E-2 visa which you’d be eligible for four years. And as long as the business is up and running and has profit, it should be quite smooth to get that E-2 visa renewed.

Pakistani clients. They’re still processing visitor visas but it’s 221 calendar days. And E-2 visas are processed a little over a month. So, depending on your urgency and the type of activities you wanna be doing in the United States, as a Pakistani national, it might be a good idea to look at the E-2 visa if you haven’t already considered it.

We have a couple of Honduran clients now. A year-and-a-half or so to get a visitor visa to the states if you’re applying as a Honduran, where you get the E-2 visa in two days for the E-2 visa for a Honduran national. And Honduras, I believe, is a five-year E-2 visa period. So, you can come and go freely in and out of the United States looking after your business and it’s, I mean, a significant difference.

US Visa Wait Times

You’re looking at a year-and-a-half to renew that B-1/B-2 or apply for a tourist or business travel visa to the United States where the E-2, you could potentially get in two days. At least get the appointment and depending on consulates, our clients get the visa on the spot or usually they get their passport back in one week, two weeks max with the E-2 visa stamped that’s placed in it.

And then another one, Tel Aviv. An Israel visitor visa takes a year whereas an E-2 visa, according to the U.S. State Department, has two calendar days. And this is always changing and I just wanted to…the purpose of this video is just for educational purposes letting you know that this opportunity does exist. It got on our radar because we had clients engaging our services that wanted to do an E-2 visa business investment as they needed to come to the United States or they wanted to come to the United States.

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It’s always best to consult with your U.S. licensed immigration attorney to see the strategy and if an E-2 visa makes sense for your unique case, as well as there are consulates around the world and it can be a little tricky getting the appointment but you don’t need to be a resident, but you don’t need to be a national of that country to apply from that consulate.

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A couple of years back, for example, we had a Swedish client who applied out of Madrid and he did not have many ties with Spain at all as Sweden was taking, I think, five months to get the E-2 visa interview and Madrid was like in a month to get the E-2 visa interview.

It’s really important that you consult with your U.S. immigration attorney to see what the best visa option is, and then also what potentially might be the best consulate to apply for your E-2 visa.