International Entrepreneur Parole (IEP) Program
Kyle Huffman • July 14, 2022
The revitalization of a temporarily suspended program last year brought of excitement for entrepreneurs, but what has happened since?
The International Entrepreneur Parole program (also called the International Entrepreneur Rule) has had a complicated history. What was designed to become a relatively simple and straightforward new option for entrepreneurs to launch start-ups in the U.S. has become a confusing, lengthy process fraught with uncertainty, rendering it one of the least desirable pathways to legally create a startup company in the United States for foreign nationals.
The IEP was initially created during the Obama administration in January 2017, during Obama’s lame duck session. In theory, the program sounded like an excellent opportunity to open more legal pathways for entrepreneurs to create businesses in the U.S., further boosting the U.S. economy and easing the burden of more intensive immigration options. An individual who wanted to pursue this program would have to show that they meet the following criteria:
- Substantial (at least 10%) ownership interest in a start-up entity that has potential for rapid growth and job creation
- The entrepreneur must have a central and active role in the start-up entity
- The start-up entity must have been created in the U.S. within the last five years
However, what was a great concept in theory has not translated into a valuable or functional program in practice. Shortly after the program was introduced late into Obama’s second term, legal challenges to the program were brought by the new Trump administration. This caused the program to be in a state of limbo while challenges made their ways through the courts. The program was available for a brief period between December 2017 and May 2018 after a federal court vacated the rule suspending the program. However, that suspension ended up being short lived due to DHS announcing in May 2018 that the program was being removed. In June of 2021, the Biden administration reinstated the IEP program.
Despite the program now being active for more than a year, it is still failing to achieve its goal of restoring faith in the United States’ immigration system. There were a handful of IEP program applications filed in the period between December 2017 and May 2018, which resulted in only one successful IEP
application under the Trump administration that we have found.
Since the relaunch of the IEP program in May 2021, hundreds of applications have been filed by dozens of immigration law practitioners. However, there are still minimal reports of successful applications. Furthermore, premium processing is not currently available for IEP program applications, and USCIS does not publicly post processing times for these applications. This makes it almost impossible for practitioners to accurately estimate the complete timeline for an IEP application. In addition to the general lack of successful applications, the applications that are receiving responses have been requests for evidence reportedly containing significant sections of boilerplate language.
With so much uncertainty around the processing time for these applications, and the lack of significant numbers of successful results with over a year of time since the program’s reactivation, it is no wonder why practitioners have been frustrated with the Biden administration over this program.
In February of 2022, a coalition of immigration attorneys and industry stakeholders came together to create the Coalition for International Entrepreneurship, which authored an open letter to the Biden administration advocating for changes to improve the IEP program. Some of the suggested changes include publicly posting the processing times for form I-941, expanding premium processing to the IEP program, and changing the department within USCIS that is responsible for adjudicating IEP application to another department that is already trained in handling more similar types of applications. Implementing these changes would go a long way to improving the International Entrepreneur Parole program and would ultimately help the Biden administration of achieving its goal of restoring faith in the U.S. Immigration system. Hopefully, the Biden administration will implement these changes soon and help the IEP program achieve its full potential.
If you have any questions about what the International Entrepreneur Parole program means for you, please schedule a consultation with one of our experienced attorneys.
We look forward to working with you.
This blog is not intended to be legal advice and nothing here should be construed as establishing an attorney client relationship. Please schedule a consultation with an immigration attorney before acting on any information read here.
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Kyle Huffman
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