Filing your E-2 visa at the U.S. Embassy Rome

This is the first thing to get right at Rome, and the easiest to get wrong. An applicant who books through the general nonimmigrant visa appointment system has not started an E-2 case here.

The Navigator handles inquiries as well as applications, so it is also the correct route for a question about your own case rather than the consular section’s general contact channels.

Rome reviews the complete package before scheduling, and confirms the expected prescreening time on receipt. That confirmation is useful: unlike posts that leave you waiting without an indication, Rome tells you roughly how long the review will take.

The consequence for planning is the same as at London or Dublin. Your evidence has to be complete when it is submitted, because there is no interview date to work towards while you assemble the remainder.

The mission states that applicants who do not reside in Italy are strongly encouraged to apply in their country of residence, because appointment availability in Italy for non-residents is limited.

We score Rome a 2 for third-country nationals, but that score has to be read alongside this instruction rather than on its own. A score describes willingness to schedule; the post itself is telling you that scheduling is where the constraint bites. If you have a genuine alternative post in your country of residence, use it.

There is no single total. The MRV fee is fixed, published and tied to your DS-160. Preparation costs — business plan and projections, document assembly, certified translations, attorney fees where counsel is involved — vary with the complexity of the enterprise.

Check the current published MRV fee before you pay, as it is the one figure that changes without notice.

Two periods sit end to end here, and Rome is more forthcoming than most about the first. The prescreening time is confirmed to you on receipt of the package. Appointment availability is then published by the Department of State by post.

Any post-interview administrative processing sits on top of both, and it 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 Italy is one of those treaty countries. You must have invested, or be actively in the process of investing, a substantial amount of your own at-risk capital in a real and operating U.S. business that you will direct and develop.

The enterprise must be at least 50 percent owned by persons holding the treaty nationality, or controlled by a qualifying national. An Italian applicant’s own eligibility does not survive a non-treaty partner holding the majority stake.

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.