Madrid Embassy Updates E-2 Visa Application Procedures

The U.S. Embassy in Madrid has issued new guidelines for submitting E-2 visa applications which will take effect on April 23, 2019.  For citizens of a treaty country, an E-2 visa is a convenient way to obtain a visa to enter, work, and live in the United States. The E-2 Treaty Investor Visa is a non-immigrant visa where investors can purchase an existing company or start up a brand-new company and continue to renew the visa as long as the company is maintained. For more information about E-2 visa requirements, please click here. You can find out more about obtaining citizenship from Grenada and an E-2 visa based on Grenadian citizenship by clicking here.

The biggest change in the new guidelines is that applications now have a limit of 15 (fifteen!) pages. In a typical E-2 application, supplemental documents include evidence of the applicant’s treaty nationality, corporate documents of the company, a detailed business plan, documents showing the legal source of the investment funds, receipt and invoices of investments that have been made, educational qualifications of the applicant, and personal documents of any dependents. When including all of these documents, a typical full E-2 application package can have up to 400 pages.

A 15-page page limit would mean that the applicant can realistically only submit a selection of excerpts of documents and a few of the investment receipts. This move would indicate that the Embassy is moving towards a system where no review of the application will be conducted before the interview, rather the applicant will only have the interview time to sell their company and convince the officer of its viability. The isn’t necessarily a bad thing as applications with large investments and charismatic investors will have a good chance of making a good impression.

The submission process is different for every consulate or embassy. There are places, like Jamaica, that would like to see full applications with full copies of all the supporting documents. While other place, like Toronto with a 70-page limit, would like to get a sense of the viability of the application without being overwhelmed with the full package. For applications in places with page limits, Scott Legal would prepare two applications, a short version that will be mailed to the embassy, and a long comprehensive version that the applicant will print and bring with them to the interview. For what to expect at an E-2 interview, please click here.