Identify the applicable prescribed evidence and make documented efforts to obtain the required records. Review any unavailable material and potential alternative evidence with the responsible adviser under the actual rules. Do not assume difficulty removes the requirement or invent records to create a complete-looking file.
Keep the retrieval history
Record requests, responses and what the issuer can provide. Explain limitations truthfully and distinguish a current statement from an original historical filing. The submission should address the specific evidentiary gap rather than rely on an unrelated account balance.
The regulations name the evidence categories the petition is expected to carry: foreign business registration records; personal and business tax returns of any kind filed within the preceding five years, in any country; evidence of other capital sources where those returns do not explain it; and certified copies of judgments, or of pending governmental civil or criminal actions and private actions for money, against the investor over the past fifteen years. Those cover origin and path only. Separate documents carry the remaining elements: subscription and escrow records for capital actually placed at risk, the business plan and economic analysis for the ten full-time positions the enterprise must create for qualifying U.S. workers, the governing agreement for the investor's management or policy role, and later the operating evidence that supports removing conditions on the two-year residence. When a named record genuinely cannot be produced, the answer is secondary evidence with a written account of the effort — the tax authority's non-availability notice, the bank's retention-policy letter, the registry search result — never a substitute built to resemble the original.
Hypothetical example: A solar distributor needs returns from eleven years ago to explain the earnings that seeded the investment, and the filing agency's retention period has run out. The file records the request and the agency's written reply, then reaches for what does exist: the accountant's retained working papers, bank statements covering the same years, the company's audited accounts, and the assessment notices issued at the time. Each is labelled with the fact it supports and the fact it does not.