It depends on what the applicant actually does here. E-2 requires treaty nationality, an enterprise with matching nationality, a substantial at-risk investment in a real operating business, non-marginality, and a position from which the investor genuinely develops and directs it. Retaining foreign interests is not disqualifying; being absent from the U.S. decisions is the risk.
Show control through decisions, not titles
Point to concrete evidence: the signature on the lease and supply contracts, authority over the U.S. bank account, the hiring decisions made, the share register. A director title on a foreign parent proves less than a record of the applicant setting prices, approving spending and directing staff here.
If a U.S. manager will run daily operations, explain the reporting line so the arrangement reads as delegation by the investor rather than replacement of the investor. Two further requirements sit alongside the control question and are unaffected by the foreign business.
The capital must be irrevocably committed and at risk in the U.S. enterprise, so intercompany arrangements that leave funds recoverable, or that route money as a fee rather than a commitment, have not met it however substantial the group's overall resources. And the U.S.
enterprise must not be marginal: it needs the present or future capacity to generate more than a minimal living for the investor and family, which is a question about that business alone and cannot be answered by pointing to profits earned abroad. A successful company in another country supplies neither the capital test nor the capacity test. Hypothetical example: an applicant running an established laboratory-services company abroad assumes its trading record supports the U.S.
case, and the review establishes that the new environmental testing operation has to answer both questions on its own footing.