The E-2 for Latin American Investors

Who holds the treaty

Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and Suriname hold full E-2 treaties. Bolivia and Ecuador hold restricted, grandfathered access tied to older investments, a nuance that changes over time and must be checked against the current State Department table. In the Caribbean: Grenada, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago, with Grenada notable for also operating a citizenship-by-investment program, which is why it appears in structuring conversations for nationals of non-treaty countries.

Colombia and Mexico are the region’s volume core, and regional demand shows up as a queue. Backlogs at specific posts often dominate the timeline, and nothing in your preparation shortens them. Preparation decides one thing: whether the record is ready when the date is.

What your file looks like from Bogotá

The hardest pages in a Latin American file are usually the money’s history, not its amount. Capital built in a family company, property sold partly in cash, loans between relatives, earnings that crossed more than one currency: none of that is unusual, and none of it documents itself. The trail is assembled from contracts, notarized transfers, tax filings, and bank records, each translated and certified before an officer reads them, and the work starts months before any filing because it cannot be compressed at the end.

The strongest evidence many investors in the region already hold is the company they run at home. An operating history documents lawful earnings, management, and years of meeting payroll, in records rather than adjectives. How counsel argues that history is counsel’s craft; assembling it in evidentiary shape, translated and reconciled with the acquisition record, is the commercial work Lotus does.

The Brazil answer

Brazil, the region’s largest economy, holds no E-2 treaty. No Brazilian qualifies on that nationality, and no preparation changes that. The conversation for Brazilian investors is a different one: some hold or can lawfully acquire a second nationality from a treaty country, through descent or through established citizenship-by-investment programs, and E-2 eligibility would then rest on that nationality. Whether that route exists for you, and whether it holds, is a determination only immigration counsel can make. We host that conversation and bring the attorneys to it.

Spanish is not a translation here

Your call, your documents, and your negotiation happen in the language you negotiate in. Moving your family and your capital on the strength of a machine translation is a risk you do not need to take.