Immigration issues frustrate owners from overseas

PALM HARBOR — A visa program designed to encourage the American dream of business ownership has turned into a nightmare for a businesswoman from the United Kingdom.

Sue Fern, the owner of the business development firm Event Pro-ssss, said she is trapped in the United States, unable to return to England to see her family under provisions of an E-2 visa she acquired 10 years ago in order to start her business. If she leaves the United States, there’s no guarantee she’ll be allowed to return, she said.

She has to extend her status every two years, costing thousands of dollars in legal fees. When she decides to retire or sell the business, she faces deportation.

Fern cannot apply to become a permanent U.S. resident without transitioning to a different visa program that would require a hefty upfront investment.

“We love living here,” Fern said. She and her husband were recruited to the United States by their then-employers in 1993. “I want to continue working and living here, but I’m trapped. I’m a hostage to the system.”

Walking away
The E-2 investor visa was designed to attract persons who could invest “a substantial amount of capital” in a business in the United States, according to the Congressional Research Service. The investor’s enterprise has to be deemed capable of making a “significant economic impact” within five years.

But there’s been a tightening of restrictions on E-2 visa holders since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, said Fern and others familiar with the visa process.

Stephen Parnell, managing member of Ireeco LLC, a Boca Raton firm that specializes in visa issues, attributes the change to a groundswell of political pressure against any kind of immigration, legal or otherwise, and a general distrust of foreigners investing in America.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not respond to a request for comment on E-2 visa restrictions.

Fern said she is “too ornery” to give up her business and go back to England, but David Crowther and Christine Crowther, a British couple who moved here on E-2 visas in 2003 to buy a custom framing business, made a different decision.

The Crowthers faced the same problems as Fern. They weren’t allowed to work outside the shop to supplement their income. They couldn’t get a homestead exemption because they were not permanent U.S. residents, and they could only get temporary driver’s licenses.

On Aug. 1, they walked away from their shop, Gallery 2 at The Shoppes at Boot Ranch in Palm Harbor, where they had employed one part-time worker, to return to Europe.

“We reluctantly came to the conclusion that if America doesn’t want two honest, law-abiding, tax-paying people in the country then we will go and live somewhere else that does,” David Crowther wrote in an e-mail.

Reform proposals
There are thousands of business owners in the United States on E-2 visas with the same dilemma, Parnell said.

“It’s something we hear about over and over again,” said Chandra Mitchell-Hancz, Fern’s attorney and an associate handling employment immigration at Neil F. Lewis PA, a law firm in Tampa.

“There haven’t been new immigration laws in eight years. The lines are getting longer, and people are getting frustrated,” Mitchell-Hancz said. “These are educated people. People we want here. We need immigration reform.”

Several proposals related to investor visas surfaced during the current session of Congress, including legislation that would allow up to 3,000 E-2 visa holders annually to qualify for permanent U.S. residency after five years, provided they invest at least $200,000 in an enterprise and create at least two full-time jobs. The measure was introduced last year but stalled in a House committee.

Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, is reviewing several legislative proposals for immigration reform, according to a spokeswoman for her office. Calls were not returned from the press offices of Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., or Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla.

Parnell, who came to the United States in 1991 on an E-2 visa, now calls the E-2 “a very dangerous way to come to the States.”

His company runs a Web site, everyvisa.com, that instead promotes the EB-5 visa, which he called “the visa of choice” for those with $1 million to invest or $500,000 if the investment is in a “targeted employment area” with high unemployment.

There are no TEAs in the Tampa Bay area.

The program requires the investor to create at least 10 new jobs. It allows EB-5 visa holders to become permanent residents of the United States after five years.

Only 800 EB-5 visas were issued out of a possible 10,000 in 2007, Parnell said. The number of EB-5 visas issued this year is expected to be higher, as investors act before the scheduled Sept. 30 sunset of the legislative authorization for the program. An extension has been approved in the House and is awaiting action in the Senate after it returns from recess on Sept. 5, Parnell said.