Roy: The E2 visa has two parts. One is the personal,
individual, family part of it and the other one is the business part
of it. That has to do with the business whether you are buying one that is
already running, that you are going to open one or that you have purchased one
already.
The family: this section has the demographic information of each
one of the members; where they were born, dates, and so on. Everything that they
want to know about each individual.
One of the things that is highly required is that you shouldn't
have any criminal convictions in the last 25 years in the UK.
A very slightly known fact is that the UK claims to expunge the records
after 12 years. Is that correct? After 12 years of you killing somebody, the
statute of limitations?
Tom: There is a statute of limitations; different offenses
have a different time limits.
Roy: The criminal record should be expunged, I believe, it
is after 12 years. However, I had a family that was not declined the E2 visa
after they made the due diligence and the whole thing and they committed
irrevocably all the money to buy a specific business. Then the immigration
attorney in London filed and then they saw through the review, the US
Consulate, in the review that Scotland Yard came up with a joy riding of an
automobile offense when he was a teenager 25 years ago.
When I asked him do you have any criminal convictions that would be on the
record that they could find he said 'no.'
The problem is that he didn't tell the truth.
One of the things I struggle to do is finding the truth of the buyer and the
seller. Because in that case we worked very hard. They came over here 3 times in
a period of 2 years to review the kind of businesses that they wanted.
If he said 'yes, I have a criminal conviction when I was a teenager 25 years
ago' I would have warned the attorney. The attorney would have said please look
for a criminal conviction 25 years ago. That would have extinguished any
problems. She got a letter 4 months later saying 'sorry we cannot process this
now, it will take another 8 months.'
Well guess what, they lost the opportunity.
They didn't lose the money, they lost the time, they made me waste a lot of
time because of that hidden truth and the sellers were not willing to wait
another 8 months. After that nasty news they were willing to wait another
4-6 months but not another 8 months because they didn't tell the story as it
was.
So criminal convictions have to be disclosed and it is up to homeland
security in review to let you go or to interview you further to learn what the
problem is. That problem of joyriding as a teenager has no effect on the
business he is going to be doing here. We all do stupid things when we are
teenagers. Some take a little longer because we are doing stupid and fun
things.
That is one thing I advise everyone. Once I engage a British couple,
Columbian couple, I ask them do you have any criminal convictions, 'no, are you
sure? I am not the police or anything like that' but to disclose it.
That is my job here to discover the truth of the buyers and the sellers.
Once we know that, if the buyer says I can only afford $70,000 to buy a
business, he may be thinking that by saying that he is going to get a great
bargain.
What happens is he is not going to get a bargain because he is going to be
looking at marginal businesses that are not going to qualify for him.
But if you have $200,000 budgeted, you have to say that. Then I'm going to
ask you 'how much more money do you have?' because you have to create a
reserve.
The reviewer is going to ask have you reviewed this business thoroughly, yes,
do you know how much working capital you are going to need, yes, how much, well,
about $40-50,000... do you have that money? ...No I'm going to make it as soon
as...Oops ...
That doesn't cut it.
That's not going to cut it because you are reaching your level of capacity
there.
Once you fill out all the paperwork, all the forms, you can download them
from the internet: do it yourself.
I advise all the foreign buyers to do those forms themselves. They are going
to run across some things they don't understand, what they are asking or what
kind of response they are looking for. I can tell them very easily. I can tell
them pick up the phone and it's going to be what 4 cents from the UK over here
per minute.
Tom: Yep
Roy: I can call them. I pay 2.5c ents from here to the UK.
So I can advise them on how to do that.
The thing is that they can throw their hands up in the air saying 'no I
don't want to do this. I'm going to hire a lawyer.'
What happens is that they already have a little bit of knowledge of all the
forms that the lawyer has to fill out for them and they are going to have the
answers for the lawyer. At least they know how much work the lawyer is going to
be doing. And won't be going to a lawyer blindly and the lawyer is going to rape
them. Well the first payment is going to be £5000. You budgeted £100,000, £5000
is not much, but once the lawyer tags you with an idiot stamp on your forehead
he is going to be milking you to death.
Learn educate yourself a little bit on the forms.
They are available on the internet. I understand in the UK not everyone has
high speed connection dial up is kind of...
Tom: ...Risky.
Roy: Go and do the exercise of looking at all the forms. I
can provide them to you.
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