IN THIS GUIDE · Two-owner purchases: nationality, voting control and separate investment trails
Start with the E-2 eligibility and application overview
Trace nationality through the whole ownership chain
The enterprise itself must have the required treaty nationality, which depends on the citizenship of the people who ultimately own it. Map every holding company, trust, and nominee arrangement until a person's passport is at the end of each line. Canadian permanent residence is not treaty nationality; citizenship is what counts. A partner whose nationality does not qualify affects the ownership arithmetic for both partners, so establish this before drafting anything.
Ownership percentage is not the same as control
A shareholders' agreement can give a minority holder vetoes, or leave a majority holder unable to appoint managers. Develop and direct looks at real authority, so read the voting thresholds, reserved matters, board composition, deadlock provisions, and any management agreement. Then describe, in ordinary language, which partner decides what. If both partners intend to seek status, each one's authority has to be described without contradicting the other's.
Each partner's investment is documented separately
Two contributions do not automatically produce two qualifying cases. Each applicant's own funds must be traced from their lawful source into the enterprise and shown to be at risk. Uneven contributions, loans between partners, or one partner funding the other create questions worth resolving in the paperwork rather than in conversation. Keep separate source-of-funds files so neither partner's evidence depends on the other's records being complete.
Agree now what happens when the partnership changes
Write down how the partners handle disagreement, illness, a buyout, or the arrival of a new investor. A change in ownership or control can raise immigration questions even while the business trades profitably, so the exit terms are not purely commercial. Preparation of any application guarantees nothing about a visa, an admission, or a lawful work start, and a partnership dispute mid-process complicates both sides at once.
Work out what the non-qualifying partner may actually do
A two-buyer structure raises a question that a single-investor case never does, and it is worth answering before roles are allocated rather than after. Where one partner holds treaty nationality and the other does not, the second partner's position in the business is not resolved by the partnership. An employee of a treaty enterprise generally needs to hold the same treaty nationality as the enterprise, so a non-qualifying partner cannot simply be given a senior title and expect that to settle it, and the family or commercial relationship between the two does not supply what nationality does. That has three consequences worth planning around. The management structure should be designed so that the person who can lawfully develop and direct the enterprise is the person actually doing it, rather than the person the partners consider the better operator. The ownership structure needs settling before incorporation, since the enterprise's own nationality generally turns on ownership by treaty nationals and is examined alongside the individual's. And the non-qualifying partner's participation needs its own examination, which may point somewhere other than an operating role. Hypothetical example: two buyers of a managed services company find that the partner with twenty years of operational experience does not hold the qualifying nationality, and redesign the arrangement so that the qualifying partner holds genuine authority rather than a title, which is a real change to how the business will run rather than a drafting adjustment.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.