Transaction costs that are not part of the qualifying investment: legal fees on both sides of the border, valuation and due diligence, environmental assessment on a working waterfront site, and the visa or petition fees themselves. Operating capital for the first year should be budgeted separately from the purchase price.
Separate the qualifying investment from the cost of getting there
The number in the purchase agreement is rarely the number the family actually needs. Due diligence on a marine facility is its own expense: a survey of the travel lift and railway, condition of the wharf structure, and an environmental assessment that a yard with decades of hull work will certainly require. Legal advice is needed in Nova Scotia and in Maine, and the two lawyers must coordinate on the share structure, since the ownership question is where this transaction is most likely to go wrong.
Government charges depend on the route taken: a visa application at a consular post or a change of status filing, with fees published by the Department of State and USCIS respectively rather than quoted from memory. Then there is working capital, which is not an afterthought — an enterprise must be real and operating and more than marginal, and a business that runs out of money in month four demonstrates the opposite. Advisers who act for Yvon rather than for the seller are the expenditure most worth protecting when the budget tightens.
- USCIS: E-2 Treaty Investors
- U.S. Department of State: Treaty Trader and Treaty Investor visas
- Department of State: 9 FAM 402.9, Treaty trader and treaty investor guidance
- U.S. Department of State: Treaty countries
- eCFR: 8 CFR 214.2, Special requirements for admission, extension and maintenance of status