Giving a legal path to permanent residency to E-2 visa holders would serve 2 purposes:
1. Retaining E-2 investors in the US who have no prospect of long term status. In the US, currently, 25% of the businesses are immigrant funded. In Silicon Valley, 44% of all startups are immigrant funded;
2. Attracting foreign investors to the US in larger numbers. In FY 2013, about 50,000 E-2 visas were issued by the US Department of State. This is an insignificant number in comparison to other nonimmigrant visas that do not create any jobs in the US (ex. 65,000 H-1Bs). EB-5 program is often unattainable by small and medium businesses and they are the ones that create the most jobs in this country: in the last 15 years, employers with less than 500 workers have created more than 2/3 of net new jobs.
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