Client story
Client's Story
Where they started
An entrepreneur from Jordan wanted to conduct business in the United States through an E-2 visa: it allows an investor to enter and manage his enterprise in America. He had the capital and business intentions, but he hit a barrier that money cannot solve.
Why the standard route did not work
The E-2 visa is available only to citizens of countries that have concluded a treaty of trade and investment with the United States. This is a matter not of investment amount, but of passport: if your country has no such treaty, the path to E-2 is closed by definition. Jordan has no E-2 treaty with the United States—and the client, despite all his resources, did not qualify for the visa.
What BRIDGES had to solve
The solution lay in changing the basis. Egypt is a country with an E-2 treaty with the United States. Egyptian citizenship gave the client the necessary status: as a citizen of a treaty signatory country, he gained access to file for E-2, which he was denied as a Jordanian. A second passport opened the visa pathway that was closed due to citizenship.
Why a standard answer would not do
The client came to BRIDGES to solve the problem at the passport level: obtain Egyptian citizenship—a country signatory to the E-2 treaty—and through it open access to the American visa. The client decided where to conduct business and reside; our task was to provide him with the missing legal basis.
I wanted to open a business in the United States under an E-2 visa; I had the money and the plans, but it turned out that Jordan simply was not on the list of treaty countries—and that was it, the path was closed by passport. Sergey proposed a solution that I would not have reached on my own: obtain Egyptian citizenship, and Egypt has an E-2 treaty with the United States. I obtained a second passport, and access to the visa opened. The problem was not money, but citizenship—and we solved it by changing the passport.
