Maine Business Is Shut Without a Renewed Visa.

“This is the forgotten story of immigration,” said Angelo Paparelli, a prominent immigration lawyer in California. “The headlines deal with Arizona and border crossings, but these are real people too. This is what happens when you play by the rules.”

In denying the Franks’ renewal application last year, immigration officials said their restaurant had become a marginal business. The government sets no specific dollar amount, but it defines a marginal enterprise as one that “does not have the present or future capacity to generate more than enough income to provide a minimal living” for the visa holder and his family. . .

“I can honestly see why people come into the country illegally, because to do it legally is almost impossible,” Mr. Franks said from Nova Scotia.

“They have tossed us aside like a used tissue,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30visas.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me

I don't think immigrants are supposed to be using them to set up a Mom 'n Pop business that more than enough locals are doing on their own.

Yes it's hard to emigrate to the US. OTOH, I can't just cross the border or hop a plane and become a legal resident of Canada or France or whatever other country I would prefer to live in.

'where seasonal home-grown businesses are a way of life,' and they hired 3 or 4 locals, as waiters. The 'standards' appear to be rather arbitrary, imo.

None of us would consider a B&B an investment business. That's a joke. It would never in a million years work for a Mexican. A large golf course or inn, that hires at least 20 people? Maybe. But not a B&B.

Maine/Oregon?

Maine population 1,318,301

Oregon population 3,825,657

Culturally, quite different, imo.

Oregon minus Portland, Salem, Eugene, and Eastern Oregon -- just the Coast, less than a million. The Oregon and Maine Coasts are very very similar. Timber and fishing gave way to tourism. We don't have lobster, we do have chinook salmon.

Personally, I am beginning to lean towards full open borders because I'm rather sick of the US anyway. But those visas weren't intended to be the same as work visas. There are a lot of Mexicans here who have little taco stands and even cash only restaurants. I don't know their status and don't care. Maybe they are using these E-2 visas. But on its face, it looks like racism to me. Boo hoo for the white people from England and asta la vista to the Mexicans.