Immigration Guides
An E-2 visa application at a U.S. consulate needs the standard Department of State items: a valid passport, the Form DS-160 confirmation page, the visa application fee receipt (if the post requires payment before the interview), and a photo (uploaded with the DS-160 or printed if the post asks for one).
There are 15 main ways to get a green card: six through family, six through the employment-based preference categories (including the EB-5 investor category), and three through the diversity visa lottery or humanitarian protection.
Your EB2 priority date is your place in the green card line. Under the November 2026 Visa Bulletin, the EB2 Final Action Date is April 1, 2025 for all chargeability areas other than China and India (including Mexico and the Philippines), October 1, 2021 for mainland China-born applicants…
An E-2 visa is hard to get in the sense that every requirement must be proven with records, but it is attainable for a national of a treaty country who invests a substantial amount of at-risk capital in a real U.S. business, can trace where that money came from, and can show the business…
You can get a green card without a sponsor through seven categories. Six let you file the immigrant petition yourself: EB-1A extraordinary ability, the EB-2 National Interest Waiver (NIW), the EB-5 investor program, a VAWA self-petition, a widow(er) petition, and Special Immigrant…
EB-3 processing time is the sum of six stages, five of them government queues and one (recruitment) run by the employer, and as of November 5, 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) stages plus recruitment add up to more than a year before your employer can file Form I-140: a prevailing…
As of November 5, 2026, the posted government times for a PERM-based EB-2 case add up to roughly 19 months before the Visa Bulletin wait and the green card application begin.
Almost any real, active, for-profit business can work as an E-2 visa business. That includes restaurants, franchises, retail stores, trucking companies, manufacturers, consulting firms and online businesses.
The E-2 visa requirements come down to seven things you must prove: you are a national of a country with a qualifying treaty with the United States; you have invested, or are actively in the process of investing, funds that you possess and control and have placed at risk; the enterprise…
H-1B registrations from the IT outsourcing and staffing companies grouped together in the September 18, 2026 presidential proclamation fell about 92 percent for the fiscal year 2027 cap, from 24,946 to 2,055, according to the figures stated in that proclamation.
The State Department issued 26,483 U.S. immigrant visas at consulates abroad in February 2026, down from 51,058 in February 2025, a decline of about half. But the drop isn’t uniform.
USCIS reports approving about 57,700 Form N-400 applications from April through June 2026, compared with about 241,300 in the same three months of 2025, a drop of roughly 76 percent according to USCIS’s own quarterly Form N-400 report.
USCIS fees in 2026 range from $0 for fee-exempt categories to several thousand dollars for investor petitions. The amount depends on the form, your filing category and whether you submit a paper filing or file online.
There is no single entrepreneur visa; founders have eight U.S. immigration options to compare: four temporary visas (E-2, E-1, L-1 and O-1), three green card categories (EB-5, EB-1A and the EB-2 National Interest Waiver), and International Entrepreneur Parole.
The main H-1B alternatives are the O-1, the L-1, nationality-based categories such as TN, E-3, H-1B1, E-1, and E-2, cap-exempt H-1B employment, F-1 OPT and J-1, and green card categories that do not depend on the H-1B lottery.
Michael Ashoori, Esq.
President of Ashoori Law
I’m a U.S. immigration lawyer and I help families, professionals, investors, and entrepreneurs get visas, green cards, and citizenship to the United States.
Since starting my law firm, I’ve helped thousands of people from all over the world with their immigration needs. I’m very passionate, hard-working, and committed to my clients.
Got a question? Send me an email.