A spouse’s earnings may help the household budget, but they do not replace the E-2 enterprise’s non-marginality showing. Assess the licensed company on its own credible business activity and economic capacity. Separately, confirm the spouse’s immigration position before assuming a new U.S. business or work activity is permitted. The failure worth naming is a forecast quietly carried by the wrong business. Household income and enterprise capacity answer different questions, and a plan that reaches non-marginality only by counting a spouse's separate earnings has not shown what it appears to show.
Separate two enterprises and two sets of assumptions
If the spouse expects to operate a different business, identify that plan explicitly rather than quietly adding its projected earnings to the investor company’s forecast. A qualifying E spouse is generally employment-authorized incident to valid E status, with applicable proof. Pending applications do not provide that permission; dependent children also receive no employment authorization through their dependent status.
Keep two sets of books and two sets of assumptions from the outset. Give the spouse's venture its own plan, its own funding and its own immigration analysis, since running a separate business is not something dependent status supplies on its own. Confirm the spouse's authorization before any work begins rather than afterwards, and treat a pending application as pending.
Children obtain no work permission through dependent status at any age, so a teenager's summer job is a question to raise rather than an assumption to act on.