IN THIS GUIDE · Separating a committed pilot enterprise from a contingent second location
Start with the E-2 eligibility and application overview
Describe the pilot as it operates today
Write the pilot location's current facts plainly: the signed lease, the equipment in place, staff on payroll, hours open, and what customers actually buy. Include the investor's own daily role, since E-2 requires that the investor genuinely develop and direct the enterprise, not merely own it. Ownership of a company does not by itself authorize the investor to perform work in the United States. This is the enterprise a reviewer can see. Write it in the present tense, and let a reader test every sentence against a document. A pilot propagation nursery that grows to order, sells to two wholesale buyers and employs three people on payroll is described by its lease, its payroll register, its supplier invoices and its bank activity, not by an adjective. Say what the investor personally does in a normal week, since developing and directing means directing this enterprise's operations rather than holding shares in it and visiting occasionally.
Mark every expansion item as committed or contingent
Take each second-site item and label it. A signed lease with a rent-commencement condition, a letter of intent, a contractor deposit held in escrow, and a revocable equipment order carry different weight. Contract, escrow, and revocation terms need fact-specific review; refundable deposits are not automatically qualifying and not automatically worthless. Where obligations conflict — a franchise territory clause against a landlord exclusivity clause — legal counsel should resolve them before filing. Put the label next to the condition, and the condition next to the person who controls it. Hypothetical example: a deposit for a second glasshouse sits in escrow and is released only when the municipality issues a water-service permit; the applicant controls neither the issuing date nor the outcome, so the sum is conditional on a third party's decision and should be described that way. Once a reader can see who holds each contingency, the committed column stops looking like an omission and starts looking like discipline.
Show funds for what is actually committed
Trace the money behind the committed portion from its lawful original source through every account to the enterprise. A closing account balance proves nothing about origin. Borrowed funds are not excluded outright, but collateral matters: a loan secured by the investor's personal assets is treated differently from one secured only by the enterprise. Missing statements can usually be supplemented, so gaps are tasks for the file rather than final answers.
Present expansion as capacity, not as fact
Expansion can still help the analysis if it is described honestly as projected capacity supported by the pilot's evidence. Non-marginality may rest on present or future capacity beyond a minimal living for the investor and family, or on significant economic contribution; there is no ten-job rule and no universal minimum investment. Prelaunch readiness can qualify where commitments are credible, so first sales at the second site are not universally required.
Test the file against the four conditions before anything else
Before the presentation is polished, run the facts against the conditions the category actually imposes, one at a time, and write a single sentence of evidence under each. Treaty nationality: whose passports, and does the ownership meet the applicable at-least-fifty-percent threshold. Irrevocable commitment and risk: which sums could be recovered by simply changing one's mind, because those are not at risk in the required sense. Marginality: what the enterprise can support beyond a minimal living for the investor and family, on present capacity or on credible future capacity. Develop and direct: what the investor decides, signs and supervises. A condition with no sentence under it is the weakest point in the file, and it is better found at this stage than in a request for evidence.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.