IN THIS GUIDE · An investor intends to operate a mobile service business
Start with the E-2 eligibility and application overview
Show the enterprise without a fixed address
A mobile model does not automatically need a storefront, but it may need a compliant administrative address, yard, or storage location. Check requirements for the trade and service areas. Registrations, insurance, booking systems, and activity records should explain how this enterprise operates, without inventing a lease to imitate a storefront business.
Record equipment and permissions precisely
List each vehicle, trailer, machine and tool with purchase documents, delivery confirmation and titles or registrations. Add trade licensing, municipal permits, contractor registration, commercial insurance and any required bonding for the places the business will serve. Equipment need not already be in production use before filing; credible prelaunch commitments can matter. What must be visible is that the assets belong to the enterprise and are ready for the work described.
Address non-marginality for a service model
A one-van operation invites the question of whether the enterprise will do more than provide a minimal living. Answer it with evidence: signed service agreements, route or territory contracts, subcontractor arrangements, hiring plans tied to job volume, or a documented economic contribution. There is no ten-job rule and no universal minimum investment. Present capacity — current or future — supported by the bookings, pricing and crew structure actually planned.
Separate ownership from the investor's own role
Owning the company does not by itself permit the investor to perform work in the United States; the E-2 role is to develop and direct the enterprise, and lawful status governs what any person may do. Decide who will hold licences, who drives, who books, and who supervises. If the model depends on the owner performing every service call, the direct-and-develop question deserves careful review before filing.
Which document answers each E-2 question
Every element of this case has a document that answers it better than the business plan does. Treaty nationality is answered by a passport, not by residence or by a corporate address. Ownership is answered by the share register and the subscription or transfer documents. Irrevocable commitment is answered by bank transfers, signed contracts, deposits paid and equipment invoices marked paid, because those are the things that would be lost if the enterprise failed. The business plan explains and connects, but it proves none of them, and a file leaning on it does so because the underlying records were never assembled. Where a plan and a bank statement disagree about what has been spent, the statement is the fact and the plan needs revising.
What sinks a service-model file
Three failure patterns recur in low-overhead operations. Funds are described as committed while still sitting in a personal account and freely reversible, which is the opposite of at risk. The enterprise's capacity is asserted rather than evidenced, so the non-marginality question is left to inference; signed agreements, a booking record and a costed hiring plan answer it, while adjectives do not. And the investor's own role is described as directing while the operating plan quietly requires that same person to perform every job, which raises the develop-and-direct question at the worst possible moment. Hypothetical example: a commercial cleaning contractor's file lists three crews in the plan and one insured operator on the schedule, and nothing explains how the second becomes the first.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.