Your Passport Is on the E-2 Treaty List. Five Reasons That May Not Be Enough.

Short answer. Being a national of a treaty country is one of several nationality questions in an E-2 case. The company must also have treaty nationality, your country may be under an entry restriction, some countries appear with an expiration date attached, a passport bought through an investment program may not count for three years, and the post you planned to use may have stopped processing visas.

One: the company has a nationality too

This is the half of the question the list does not answer, and I watch it fail several times a year.

The business must be at least fifty percent owned by nationals of the treaty country. Owners who are U.S. lawful permanent residents do not count toward that fifty percent, and owners inside the United States must be maintaining E status. For the principal investor, the control requirement sits at 22 C.F.R. § 41.51(b)(11), satisfied by owning at least fifty percent or by holding operational control through a managerial position or other corporate device.

You can hold a qualifying passport and still put the company outside the category without touching your own eligibility. Give half the equity to a U.S. citizen partner. Bring in a brother who became a permanent resident last year. Let a broker take twenty percent instead of a fee. Each of those is a reasonable business decision and each one can end the case, and all of them get made at the cap table months before anyone talks to an immigration lawyer.

Two: a treaty country can still be under an entry restriction

Proclamation 10998, signed December 16, 2025 and effective January 1, 2026, fully suspends entry, immigrant and nonimmigrant alike, for nationals of nineteen countries.

Only one treaty country is on the full-suspension list: the Republic of the Congo. That is Congo-Brazzaville. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a different country, a separate treaty country, and is not on the list. A Congo-Brazzaville national should expect an E-2 application to be refused while the suspension stands. The exceptions are narrow but real: lawful permanent residents, holders of visas issued before the effective date, dual nationals applying on the passport of a country that is not designated, and case-by-case national interest exceptions.

The partial list is where clients panic unnecessarily. A second group of countries is restricted only as to B-1/B-2, F, M, J, and immigrant visas. Senegal and Togo are both on that partial list and both are treaty countries, and their nationals remain eligible for E visas under the proclamation’s terms. I have had more than one conversation with an investor who abandoned a U.S. project because a headline said “travel ban” and named his country.

Read which categories are actually suspended. Note also that a proclamation of this type reaches visa issuance and entry, not a change or extension of status granted by USCIS to someone already here.

Three: some countries appear with an expiration date

Ecuador is the live one. E-2 is available to Ecuadorian nationals only for investments established or acquired before May 18, 2018, and grandfathered nationals are entitled to E-2 status until May 18, 2028.

That is under two years away. If you are Ecuadorian and holding an E-2 on a pre-2018 investment, your planning horizon is shorter than your visa validity suggests, and every alternative, whether EB-5, EB-2, or an employment-based path, takes longer than the time you have left. The clock is the whole case. Bolivia has a similar structure with a 2012 cutoff.

Four: a purchased passport is not automatically a treaty passport

Since the 2022 amendment to INA § 101(a)(15)(E), 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(E), an applicant who acquired the relevant nationality through a financial investment, and who has not previously been granted E status, must have been domiciled in that country for a continuous period of not less than three years at some point before applying.

I see this most often with Grenada, Turkey, and the Caribbean programs. The passport arrives in months. The eligibility takes three years of actual residence. The requirement is in the statute itself, so if you have been told otherwise, ask to be shown the language that says so.

Dual nationals who hold a treaty nationality by birth or descent may generally apply on that nationality, which is often the simplest answer available.

Five: the post you planned on may have moved

Effective August 1, 2026, State realigned visa services across Africa, with twenty-five posts ceasing routine processing and twenty regional hubs absorbing the work for both nonimmigrant and immigrant visas, including petition-based cases. Separately, visa operations at Juba, Kinshasa, and Kampala were suspended in May 2026 during an Ebola outbreak. Confirm the operating status of a specific post before you build a timeline around it.

None of this is a reason to abandon a good business

It is a reason to finish the nationality question before you spend money on the investment question.

Before you sign a lease or a purchase agreement, we will run the full analysis: your passport, the cap table, the applicable proclamation, and the post you will actually use. It is the cheapest hour in an E-2 case. Call or text 512.761.8479.

Read next: E-2 Visa Requirements · Buying an Existing Business on an E-2