L-2 status

Hi

My husband is looking to move to US on a L-1 visa. I am told I can accompany him to the border where my passport will get stamped for L-2. I can then apply for a work permit which takes 2-3 months.

However I am exploring possibilities of importing into the US.what kind of visa do i need for that? Can my L-2 status help? If I bring in some funds to put in as down payment for my house can I count that as investment? Thanks.

You mean an import business? Or you want to be an investor?

If you qualify for L-2, I wouldn't worry about it until your husband's L-1 status expires. E-2 visas are very complex and if you can establish a business in the US prior to applying it makes the application process more straightforward as you have actual financial statements rather than just a business plan.

Read this: http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/I-765instr.pdf (bottom of page 4).

It actually takes about 3-4 months to get an EAD, plus time for the biometrics. Takes time in internal mail to get to the local USCIS office and they usually only let you pick them up on a certain day of the week which is why it takes over 3 months.

In fact looking at my old one the "issued" date is four days after the "valid from" date, lol. Which gives you an indication of their mindset.

House down payments don't qualify as business investment, unless you can use some tortured explanation as to why that is your office, etc.

If you're really deadset on the E-2, USCIS can book you an appointment with the SBA at the local Federal building and they will let you watch their "how to run a small business" video which I get the impression is what the USCIS employees themselves are forced to watch in order to process E-2 applications.

And you can experience all the fun of meeting Johnny the cartoon balance sheet and Mary the cartoon income statement. And then get told off by a Federal Govt. employee for snoring.

Not that that happened to me of course.

Thanks Steve. But here is where I am confused, what do I need to do to establish a business in US? I am specifically intrested in importing goods from overseas and supplying to the US retailers.

I will get an L-2 but when I contacted an immigration Lawyer he said I cannot be self employed under an L-2 visa. Another one suggested my husband can register a company & employ me (can he do that with L-1 status)

So just set up a corporation and the corporation employs you.

Probably a good idea to set up a corporation anyway if you ever go to E-2, makes the paperwork more straightforward.

The corporation will have to do all the withholding taxes and so on but you've got to do that anyway as self-employed.

The only real catch here is whether you intend to file (personally) as a non-resident alien or a resident alien. On an L visa you can do either no problem, however if you truly intend to stay in the US temporarily, filing as a resident can cause problems down the road. You've also got the problem of your husband losing his job - if that happens you're in a serious mess because you have to file jointly, and his tax home would move back to Canada. If there's a serious risk of that happening I would recommend you go for an E-2 now, so that your immigration status is not dependent on his.

However from the sounds of it you plan on staying at least five years, and filing as non-resident longer than five years gets tricky anyway. So move your tax home to the US and just set up a corporation.

Which type of corporation is the real question. That's a bit of a tricky one. C-corp makes the most sense for immigration purposes (because the corporation and the employees are clearly separate entities) but S-corp is simpler from a filing standpoint, they were designed for small businesses.

If you want your husband to own the corporation it's totally irrelevant what his immigration status is, how many US corporations are owned by the Chinese etc? Corporate ownership is not dependent on immigration status in the US. However, S-corporations MUST be resident corporations and have no stockholders filing as non-resident aliens.

If it were me I think I'd play it safe and do the C-corp route (because if you ever get refused entry, the corporation does not depend on your immigration status, so your business remains intact and you can apply for E-2 at that point), but I'm not scared of paperwork and it is more complex to do it that way.

Probably a good idea to read the small business guide on the IRS website, however in there they basically assume you will use an S-corporation.

If you're completely clueless about corporations, local colleges do courses about them for small businesses or you can sit and enjoy the video at the SBA office.

In fact, thinking about it, hmm, yup technology has moved on and it's all here: http://www.sba.gov/services/training/on ... index.html