E‑2 Case Study: How a Ukrainian Gym Buyer Proved an Inheritance After an RFE

For Manifest immigration attorney Lahaina Araneta McBeth, an E-2 petition usually comes down to paperwork the investor already has. Unlike an extraordinary ability petition, which asks applicants to prove they rank among the best in their field, an E-2 asks investors to show they put a substantial amount of their own money into a real U.S. business they will run. They also have to show where that money came from. But what happens when the source of funds is hard to document?

That was the core issue in one of Araneta McBeth's latest cases, where a Ukrainian national came to Manifest with an established boxing gym in their sights. As a longtime fitness enthusiast who loves boxing and Muay Thai, the client wanted to turn the establishment into a family-friendly studio that kept its boxing roots and added functional fitness and women-focused classes.

The problem was money: While Araneta McBeth's client had the funds to own and run the boxing gym, they received them as an inheritance from their late father, an entrepreneur who earned his wealth through several businesses abroad. Proving where that money came from, years after his death, meant Araneta McBeth and her client had to piece together old estate records, tax filings, and receipts from abroad to show USCIS the funds had a lawful origin.

"It was definitely a hard case," Araneta McBeth says.

Tracing an inheritance across borders

Under federal immigration regulations, the money an E-2 investor puts into a business cannot have been “obtained, directly or indirectly, through criminal activity.” For this client, the fact that the money came from an inheritance was not the problem, since estates are one of several acceptable E-2 visa source of funds. Instead, Araneta McBeth had to show that the father's businesses, which produced the inheritance, did not earn that money through criminal activity.

For most E-2 applicants, this part of the petition means tracing their own money through tax returns, bank statements, and wire transfers, from the day they earned it to the day it reached the business. But the client's father had run businesses in several countries with far lighter tax-reporting rules than the U.S., and the income behind the inheritance was several years old. That left Araneta McBeth and her client with a thin paper trail to draw from.

"The way he earned his money," Araneta McBeth says of the client's father, "was not as easy to source as if he had been working in the U.S. filing U.S. tax returns. Different countries have different tax rules too. When you're trying to trace money, it's just harder because you don't really have to report a lot of things."

Because of those gaps, gathering the right records took time. Many documents were incomplete or no longer available, and the client struggled to get what remained from the people managing their father's estate.

Four requirements that came together quickly

On top of proving a clean source of funds, Araneta McBeth and her client also had to meet the other four E-2 requirements. These were more straightforward, because the client did not have to rely on outside parties to produce the evidence. Ukraine has been an E-2 treaty country since 1996, so the client's nationality qualified from the start.

Buying an existing E-2 business did much of the remaining work. The purchase agreement and wire transfer for the gym documented a substantial investment, while photos of the space and its online reviews showed USCIS a real, operational business.

To show the client could develop and direct the gym, the team prepared a résumé that paired the client’s professional work history with their long record in fitness. The gym is the client's first business, so that broader experience carried weight.

To show the business was more than marginal, Araneta McBeth and her client created an E-2 visa business plan. Because USCIS requires an E-2 enterprise to generate more than a minimal living for the investor and their family, the client had to show the gym could create jobs and taxable revenue. Buying an existing gym helped, since the business already had paying members and incoming revenue.

Skipping a long wait for a visa interview

Most investors, including a car parts reseller Araneta McBeth represented earlier this year, go through an E-2 consular interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate. However, once they were ready to file, Araneta McBeth and her client decided to request a change of status from inside the U.S. instead of applying for an E-2 visa abroad.

The reason? For Ukrainians, Araneta McBeth says, that route is especially difficult because they don't have a home consulate where they can get an appointment due to the war in Ukraine. If the client decided to pursue consular processing, they would most likely have had to apply in another embassy.

"Some wait times for stamping are several months—sometimes over six months—though it depends on the consulate," she says, referring to the wait for an interview and the visa stamp in an applicant's passport.

They also filed from within the country because the client was already in the U.S. on a B-1/B-2 visa. Visitor status allows limited business activities, such as meeting with business associates and negotiating contracts, which let the client tour gyms for sale and close the purchase. However, a visitor visa does not authorize work, so the client could not fully take over operations without a new status. Filing Form I-129 with USCIS let the client switch to E-2 status without leaving the country.

Answering USCIS's request for evidence

When Araneta McBeth and her client filed the change-of-status request on August 18, 2026, the rest of the petition was strong, but the source of funds remained a weak spot. And in early September, USCIS issued a request for evidence asking for more proof that the money behind the gym was lawfully obtained.

"[The client] wasn't able really to access a lot of financial documents to prove the source of funds, and that's what the RFE was about," Araneta McBeth says.

In their RFE response, Araneta McBeth compiled old inheritance records, tax returns from the client’s father, and receipts tied to his businesses. Taken together, these documents showed where the inheritance came from, how it passed to the client, and how it reached the seller of the gym. "We got really creative with the actual supporting documents," Araneta McBeth says, describing her aim as to account for the funds "dollar per dollar."

The response was filed on October 15, 2026. USCIS approved the change of status on November 2, 2026, eighteen days later.

About Lahaina Araneta McBeth, Manifest immigration attorney

Lahaina Araneta McBeth is licensed in California and focuses on treaty investor and extraordinary ability cases. She came to immigration law through her own background in a family of immigrants and her interest in community work. Lahaina builds each petition to make approval as straightforward as possible for the reviewing officer.