IN THIS GUIDE · Explain customer evidence without inventing a minimum customer count
Start with the E-2 eligibility and application overview
Separate customers from prospects
Hypothetical example: a forecast assumes both a signed agreement and several conversations will produce sales. Distinguish binding terms, actual performance and uncertain prospects. A customer list alone does not establish the forecast.
Assess the real enterprise
E-2 requires a real, operating, nonmarginal enterprise. Capacity beyond minimal living for the investor and family or significant economic contribution matters. There is no universal required customer count or fixed job quota that substitutes for the actual assessment.
Keep investment and nationality conditions
The investor needs treaty nationality, qualifying ownership and development and direction. Lawful substantial capital must be genuinely committed and at risk. Revenue expectations do not replace source and path evidence or actual investment.
Explain financing and control
Relevant treaty nationals generally must own at least half the enterprise. Enterprise-secured borrowing is not qualifying capital; other financing requires its actual terms. Properly structured visa-contingent escrow may be relevant, but neither a forecast nor a draft contract proves commitment by itself. Personally unsecured borrowing or borrowing secured solely by non-enterprise personal assets may count under its actual terms. Debt secured by enterprise assets is excluded even when personal assets also secure it.
Explain enterprise nationality and nonmarginality precisely
Enterprise nationality generally requires at least 50% ownership by nationals of the relevant treaty country. The investor must develop and direct the business through at least 50% ownership or other qualifying operational control. If nonmarginality rests on future capacity, that capacity generally must be realizable within five years after normal business activity begins. The investor must intend to depart when E status ends; Canadian citizens generally need an E visa.
Committed funds and real control, alongside the marginality question
Substantiality is proportional: the amount invested is compared with the total cost of buying this dealership, and a purchase of all the shares at fair value for a business with inventory, a building lease, and a service shop will ordinarily be substantial. The enterprise must meet the applicable non-marginality analysis; substantiality is assessed against the actual cost of purchasing or establishing it, without a universal minimum. Canada is a treaty country, so a Canadian citizen may qualify regardless of residence, and at least fifty percent of the enterprise must be owned by treaty nationals of that country. Repairs shift the budget, delay the first customer, and raise questions about what was actually committed and what remains negotiable with the seller or landlord. A business whose trucks are financed and whose lease cannot be assigned is worth less than the price suggests, and the E-2 analysis looks at what the buyer will own and control after closing, not at what the seller's brochure describes. A loan secured by the assets of the business being purchased does not count, since the lender rather than the buyer bears that risk; if the resort fails, the seller takes the resort back and the buyer's exposure was never real. Where debt was taken on, describe the security given, since debt secured by business assets is treated differently from borrowing backed by personal collateral. E-2 funds must be irrevocably committed, exposed to commercial risk and directed to an enterprise that is not marginal.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.