Maine Business Is Shut Without a Renewed Visa (E-2 visa)

[n2doc]

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: May 28, 2010

Dean Franks talked to a friend while his wife, Laura, sorted through possessions at a garage sale at their home in Arundel, Me.

“Closed. Gone to try and get a new visa,” read the hand-scrawled message taped inside the window of Laura’s Kitchen, a cozy eatery that specialized in corned beef hash and omelets and where the tiny tables were still set with brightly colored napkins. “Hope to see you in the spring. Dean & Laura.”

The sign turned out to be overly optimistic. Dean and Laura Franks, a British couple who opened the restaurant in 2000, found that after nine years of running their business, they could not renew their visa, forcing them to shutter the restaurant and leave the country.

The Franks are among thousands of people who enter the United States each year on E-2 visas, which allow citizens from countries with which the United States has certain trade treaties to invest in businesses and work here. The visas generally are renewed every two years, but there is no limit on how many times they can be renewed. Still, they are not intended as a path to permanent residency or citizenship.

But now, immigration advocates say they are hearing more and more accounts of renewal applications being turned down. It has been an enigmatic process for the Franks, uprooting their lives even though they have paid all their taxes, own the restaurant and its adjacent rental house, and have no debts except a mortgage on their home in Arundel, about 35 miles away.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30visas.html

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

1. That's possibly the most ridiculous story I have ever read

Their gross income of over 80K was deemed "marginal"?

They would have to deport most Americans with that as a guideline. They ran a business which paid taxes, they owned a home and paid property taxes, they provided shelter to someone with their rental property, and they employed four other people.

The people in their community should write letters to everyone they can think of and contact their Congress critters on their behalf. This is just insanely stupid of the Immigration Service.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

2. the administration of the E-2 has always been dumb

There is no real reason it should be handled any differently than the EB-5 program for immigrant investors which is eligible for a green card and unlike the E-2 visa the EB-5 visa actually has a coherent set of criteria associated with it.