How do we get an E-1 Treaty Trader visa without trading goods.
Watch this video and I'll share with you how.
Hello everybody, my name is Jacob Sapochnick.
I'm an immigration attorney based in San Diego, California.
In this video I want to share with you a case study, a story of a client of ours that…and
the strategy that we followed about setting up an E-1 Visa, Treaty Trader Visa without
actually needing to trade actual goods but using something different.
So in this case, you know, we've done a few videos about E Visas and we have one specific
one about the E-1 which we'll link up here.
We can see it, but essentially the E-1 is a Treaty Trade Visa, which you need to have.
You have to be a member of the treaty trade country list.
And you need to have at least 50 percent of your trade with the United States and your
foreign country.
And most important, the trade must be one of the few things.
Typically it's goods, it's a commodity, it's trade of something physical.
But the law also allows us to do services and technology.
And in this case, we had a client from Israel who came to us and say, listen, I have this
technology.
This process to create physical training equipment which is placed in parks and recreational
facilities in Israel and this is our unique patent, how we build it and how we structure
it.
But the actual product itself is not coming from Israel.
It's coming from China because that's where they build it.
It's much more cost effective to do it.
And how do I use that to come up here, to come to the U.S. and get a visa.
And again, this person was now working for the company in Israel who was building the
product.
He was the one that had the patent and the technology.
And so I couldn't get him over here on L Visa because he was no longer working for that
company.
He was an independent consultant person who was about to retire and he wanted to live
in the U.S. so we went back to the rules and we realized that the E-1 Visa allows you also
to trade also in technology.
And in fact that he had the patents that he the designs and everything was designed in
Israel.
Everything derived from Israel but the actual products were coming from China.
So we had to kind of come up with a plan.
So first of all, we established the fact that 100 percent of the design and the licensing
coming from Israel.
We also established the fact that the rights to build those products must be signed by
the company in Israel and also be approved by the person who actually is the person who
hold the patent which is our client.
Then had agreements between this company in Israel and their manufacturing facility in
China who is also controlled by an Israeli, a designer who makes sure that the quality
and the way everything is going to be built is based on the Israeli technology.
We had all those agreements as well.
Then we show that the majority of the funds are coming from Israel to fund that build
up and then we finally documented how it's coming to the United States.
It was very interesting because when the person went to the U.S. embassy in Israel for his
interview, he had to kind of break it down in the business plan, how the process is happening,
where are the products deriving from, what is the rights of the Chinese manufacturer
to create it?
Everything went back to the Israeli company, to the Israeli patent holder and to the Israeli
idea that is also coming from there.
And eventually the company was going to be based in the United States and Los Angeles
also had contracts with the city and with the state of California to be able to build
those parks again based on that Israel innovation.
So that's kind of how we tied it in together.
So there's were no actually goods coming from the treaty company…country Israel, but only
the technology and the rights to manufacturing or create everything that derived from that
technology was Israeli.
And while the actual physical products came from different country from China, that's
another way to do it.
So it could be a good opportunity for designers and developers for many countries that have
the E-1 Treaty, but they choose to build their products in China or the Philippines or Vietnam
where manufacturing is much cheaper.
But the creative ideas and the technology is coming from the treaty country.
So that was a very successful case.
That person got his E-1 and then a year later, because of this technology that is utilized
for the good, you know, helping people lose weight, stay healthy, we're able to get him
a Green Card as an exceptional entrepreneur, which I'll do a separate video on it later
on.
But that's how he's was able to transition from his E-1 to a green card because he was
able to contribute to the United States technology.
And he showed why he didn't need to be sponsored by his own company.
He was able to be an alien of extraordinary ability and he was able to get his green card
that way.
So that was that case study about how to get an E-1 without actually trading in goods.
But in this case it was technology and IP.
Hopefully this was helpful.
If you have questions or if you have any ideas or anything that you want to share with me
I'm here for you.
So post your questions in the comments and we'll see you at our next video.