mkukusa

Good afternoon, I am after some opinions please, here is my situation:

Myself and my wife are the only directors and 100% share holders in a UK company that turns over in excess of £1 Million, in 2018 we are looking to either set-up an entirely separate company in the USA that does the exact same thing, or set-up a subsidiary of the UK company in the USA, if the USA company is as successful as the UK company it would turn over in excess of $10 Million within 5 years.

Next month (December) we are heading to New Jersey to look for a house to buy, this will be paid for in cash (no mortgage).

Our eventual goal is for us both to have dual citizenship (visa) with the UK and USA, so that if we want to we can live for a year at a time in either country in our homes.

As we have not yet setup the USA business or purchased a property, I thought that now would be the best time to get advise on how I should setup the business in the USA to enable me to gain a visa for us both in the future.

Your thoughts and opinions are greatly received.

Thank you.

Nutmegger

Welcome to BE! Don't buy the house until you have sorted out the visa, or you may end up with a property you can only visit for 90 days at a time. Possible visas to look into, L-1, if your UK business will continue to operate with a staff there and you can look upon this new venture as starting a US branch. Otherwise, it would have to be an E-2, which only permits you to stay in the US as long as the subject business is operating. Take a look at this comparison of visas:

Pulaski's Ways: How to Live and Work in the USA : British Expat Wiki

tom169

Surely your first step should be scoping out an ideal location for an office - factors to consider is availability staff, distribution networks (if applicable), COST. NJ is a high cost state.

Then you will work with a reputable immigration attorney with experience in this field to create a full business plan that is to USCIS's specification.

Get your visas that provide a path to LPR, have the company sponsor the LPR process and then 5 years later you can apply for citizenship.

Whatever you do, don't buy the house first!

Jerseygirl

Don’t buy a house until you have a green card in hand. Visas are not permanent...if for some reason they are not renewed you must leave the US. Several of our members have been in that very situation. One particular member the visa renewal delay was an error on behalf of USCIS...tough luck they had to leave.

mkukusa

Thanks for your replies, with regards to the house, we currently travel to the USA on vacation 4 to 5 times a year and stay 2 to 4 weeks at a time, hotel accommodation and house rental is expensive, having the house there would be home from home, if we could only visit for 90 days at a time it wouldn't be a problem.

With regards to staff and offices, we won't need any, it is an internet based business so we can work from home (hence buying the house) and our data for the business will be located in a 3rd party data centre in the USA.

We need to setup the business in the USA as the product we sell is a subscription based SaaS (software) package that will be custom built for the US market.

tom169

Oh right. I'm familiar with SaaS. So your plan is to hire American employees to develop & maintain the software? But for them to all work from home?

mkukusa

No, I don't need any US employees, the software has been running for 9 years in the UK, we will just tweak it slightly to meet the US market, I have employees in Russia and the Ukraine (very cheap and very good).

@jerseygirl, NJ is a very big place with some beautiful locations, I could say the same about Yorkshire ;-) I am sure there must be a few nice places in Yorkshire ;-)

Noorah101

If the business is internet- based, and you don't need any employees, why do you NEED to run the business physically in the USA?

Rene

shiversaint

I think you'll have a hard time if your only claim about your business is that you'll be selling it to Americans.

As it stands, you can do what you're proposing from the UK, you do not need to be in the US for something that is SaaS and not developed onsite.

Generally, you need prove that you'll be contributing significantly to the American economy. AKA hiring US Citizens.

tom169

Then I can't see this working out from an immigration standpoint. The idea is to open an office and hire Americans for the visa(s).

mkukusa

I need to be in the USA to meet clients.

BenK91

That's what the VWP is for.

Before I moved to the US I used to travel to Pasadena on the VWP for meetings in our office out there. That was a SaaS/IaaS company and I remember them opening up the US office. I believe it was quite a struggle but in the end they managed it and now they have around 40 employees. That's a company that turns over around $40 million a year.

Why not just buy a holiday home if you're set on that and just visit as and when you need on the VWP? It doesn't seem like you necessarily need a visa or green card, more that you want one.

Noorah101

You don't need to live permanently in the USA to meet clients. The VWP allows this.

Rene

Jerseygirl

I have moved the off topic posts re property in NJ into a new thread in the Main Us forum...

http://britishexpats.com/forum/usa-5...-forum-905887/

mkukusa

I need to visit clients every day not just for 90 days at a time, a visitors visa isn't going to work.

Surely whether I "need" or "want" a visa is irrelevant BenK, I am here for help, not for your personal opinion on what I "want" or "need".