Investing into the United States is never one kind of legal work. It is a visa, a tax structure, a closing, and a reporting calendar that runs for years, usually arriving at the same time. We work with families and family offices from China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, most often on real estate, on a closely held business, or on the residency that follows. The work is detail-heavy. Our job is to keep detail-heavy from becoming a problem.
Talk to an inbound investment attorneyForeign investment work into the U.S. rarely arrives one issue at a time. A China-based family buying a Bellevue office building can show up at one closing with FIRPTA withholding, an ITIN application, and a treaty-position memo all due that day. An E-2 visa for a Korean operator usually doesn't stay an immigration matter. It becomes entity formation, then an employment plan, then often an EB-5 conversation three years out. We hold those threads together from our Bellevue office and work alongside the U.S. accountants, offshore counsel, and home-country advisors a client already has.
Petition-side EB-5 work for individual investors. Source-of-funds documentation, project diligence, the I-526E, conditional residency, and the I-829 removal that follows.
Treaty-investor petitions for nationals of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the U.K., and the other treaty countries. Business plans, substantiality of investment, and renewals.
L-1A and L-1B transfers for executives, managers, and specialized-knowledge employees moving from a foreign parent into a U.S. office, including new-office filings and blanket programs.
Developer-side counsel for regional centers and project sponsors. TEA designations, offering documents, securities compliance, and ongoing job-creation reporting.
Timed planning before the residency clock starts. Basis step-ups, expatriation tax exposure, treaty positions, and the entity structures that determine what survives the move.
Acquisition structuring, FIRPTA withholding, treaty analysis, and U.S. tax coordination for foreign buyers of Pacific Northwest real estate.
Inbound acquisitions and greenfield entry. Entity choice, share and asset deals, share-purchase and merger agreements, and the post-closing integration that follows.
Voluntary and mandatory CFIUS notices and declarations, FIRRMA jurisdiction analysis, and mitigation-agreement counsel for sensitive sectors and critical-tech targets.
Annual FBAR filing, FATCA Form 8938 reporting, and voluntary disclosure when a year has been missed.
Coordinated counsel for foreign investors whose immigration and U.S. investment decisions intersect. Visa strategy aligned with the entity, the property, and the tax position, handled in one engagement instead of relayed across multiple firms.
Foreign investors and family offices return for the same three reasons. None of them is the deal at hand. It’s the deal after it.
You meet the partner who will draft your closing documents. They’re the one who will pick up your call about the visa renewal or treaty question three years from now.
Most inbound matters touch immigration, tax, real estate, and business at once. We coordinate across the firm so you don’t pay four lawyers to talk to each other.
We’ve seen this market in five cycles. That matters when a foreign buyer asks what a fair offer looks like in this submarket, or when an entitlement question turns into a five-year wait.
We start with a conversation. The investor or family, the U.S. plans, the timeline, the owner’s real goals. Strategy first. The deal, the visa, or the filing follows from it.
Visa path, entity choice, and tax structure get mapped together. What holds the U.S. asset, what files the petition, what the exit looks like. All decided in week one, not week ten.
Source-of-funds documentation, project review, treaty analysis, plus the diligence the other side will run on you. Surfaces real risk before it costs a closing.
Petition, purchase agreement, loan documents, intercompany agreements, and the ancillary schedules. Whichever the matter calls for. Senior attorney drafting from the first version.
Petition submission, funds flow, signature pages, and the closing binder. Uneventful when the prior weeks have been thorough.
Visa renewals, FATCA and FBAR filings, Form 5472 reporting. The operational counsel that follows a clean entry runs for years.
We coordinate the FIRPTA withholding analysis, run ITIN applications for the buyers, paper the LLC that takes title, and brief U.S. tax counsel on the treaty position. All timed to a thirty-day close.
We file the L-1A petition, form the Delaware-and-Washington subsidiary, draft the intercompany services agreement, and put the employment and stock-option plan in place before the manager and family arrive.
We represent the investor’s I-526E petition and source-of-funds package on one side, and the regional center on its offering documents and TEA designation on the other. The matter runs through I-829 removal years later.
We run the FIRRMA jurisdictional analysis, file the CFIUS declaration, and negotiate a mitigation framework with the committee. The deal closes six weeks past the original timeline.
Structured the U.S. holding LLC, handled the FIRPTA withholding analysis, ran ITIN applications for the family members taking title, and coordinated outside tax counsel on a treaty position. Closed within the contract’s thirty-day window.
Prepared the source-of-funds package across three jurisdictions, papered the investment into a regional-center TEA project, and filed the I-526E petition through USCIS review. Conditional residency granted. I-829 removal is in process.
Filed the L-1A petition for the executive, formed the Delaware–Washington subsidiary, drafted the intercompany services and IP-license agreements, and put the U.S. employment plan in place. The manager and family relocated on schedule.
From engagement to I-526E filing, expect two to four months for source-of-funds documentation and project diligence. USCIS adjudication then runs roughly eighteen to thirty-six months in the current backlog. Conditional residency is granted on approval; the I-829 removal-of-conditions filing comes two years later.
Yes. EB-5, E-2, and L-1 are the three investor and intracompany visas we file most often. We also coordinate on dependent visas, status adjustments, and the green-card path where it’s the right next move.
Generally no, on the same matter. With informed consent we can represent an investor on one project and a regional center on a different project, where the interests do not collide. We’ll be direct about it in the engagement letter.
Yes. We have Mandarin-fluent counsel and regularly coordinate with translators for Korean, Japanese, and other Asia-Pacific languages. Engagement letters and key documents can be prepared bilingually where that helps a client review them with family or advisors.
Tax matters that touch foreign investors usually touch FIRPTA, treaty positions, FATCA, and FBAR. We coordinate with U.S. CPAs and your home-country tax counsel so the U.S. side is filed clean. If audit or examination follows, we don’t hand the file off.
Clean filings and careful drafting. The cross-border counsel an inbound move deserves.
Oseran Hahn P.S. · 11225 SE 6th St, Suite 100 · Bellevue, WA 98004
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