Filing your E-2 visa at the U.S. Consulate Halifax

The two instructions are compatible — naming the requirements is not the same as quoting them — but the emphasis differs, and a letter drafted for one post reads oddly at the other.

What Canada wants is facts against requirements rather than requirements against assertions. The officer already knows what the standard says. The letter’s job is to show where in your package each element is answered, and with what.

A practical test: if a paragraph would read identically in someone else’s application, it is regulation rather than argument, and Canada is asking you to cut it.

The DS-160 confirmation page, the DS-156E, the G-28, the appointment confirmation letter, civil documents such as birth and marriage certificates, the passport bio-page copy, and the tabs and dividers themselves.

Where the limit still binds, the mission suggests the short business plan option. That is the published route, and it is better than thinning evidence, because the plan is the only document whose length you actually control.

We score Halifax a 0 for third-country nationals, the bottom of our scale, alongside Quebec City. An applicant with no Canadian tie should expect real difficulty being scheduled here.

All seven Canadian posts email the same E-visa unit, so applying at a more open post — Toronto scores a 3, Vancouver and Montreal a 2 — changes where you are seen without changing how your case is read. The score describes willingness to schedule an appointment, not eligibility for approval.

There is no single total. The MRV fee is fixed, published and tied to your DS-160. Preparation costs vary with the complexity of the enterprise, and the required paper copy adds a printing and binding expense.

Check the current published MRV fee before you pay.

The Department of State publishes appointment wait times by post, and that is the figure to check rather than any fixed estimate. The seven Canadian posts are listed separately even though one unit reads them all.

Any post-interview administrative processing sits on top of the appointment wait and is not uniform across applicants.

The E-2 is a nonimmigrant treaty investor visa open to nationals of countries holding a qualifying treaty of commerce with the United States, and Canada is one of those treaty countries. You must have invested, or be actively investing, a substantial amount of your own at-risk capital in a real and operating U.S. business that you will direct and develop, and the commitment must be irrevocable rather than intended.

The enterprise must be at least 50 percent owned by persons holding the treaty nationality, or controlled by a qualifying national. This is the requirement that most often defeats an otherwise strong application, because it turns on the ownership table rather than on the applicant.

One distinction to settle early: the E-2 is investment-based but offers no green card path, unlike EB-5, and it requires none of the prior corporate employment the L-1 does.