🔄 Updated for 2026 — E-2 treaty country list, investment requirements, and processing times verified current as of last review 📖 Reading time: 20 minutes  |  ✍️ ExpatWiki Editorial Team A restaurant owner from Seoul had been running a successful Korean BBQ chain in Los Angeles for eleven years on this visa, renewed every five years without issue. His H-1B colleagues assumed he must have gotten a green card. He hadn't. He hadn't needed to. It gave him the right to own a business, employ staff, and live in the US indefinitely as long as the business operated. When he eventually sold the chain, the proceeds funded a new venture and a new petition. Same visa category. Different business. Twelfth year in the US. The E-2 Treaty Investor Visa is one of the least-known and most underused pathways for entrepreneurial expats. No fixed minimum, no lottery, no employer sponsor — and no government job offer required. This guide covers exactly who qualifies, what "substan...

🔄 Updated for 2026 — enrollment deadlines, ACA income thresholds, and COBRA rules verified current as of last review 📖 Reading time: 17 minutes  |  ✍️ ExpatWiki Editorial Team T he email arrived on a Wednesday in late October. Open enrollment closes Friday. Three plan options, a 47-page benefits guide attached, and a decision that would govern every doctor's visit, prescription, and hospital stay for the next twelve months. A data scientist from Hyderabad, six weeks into her first H-1B job in Chicago, stared at terms she'd never encountered — deductible, out-of-pocket maximum, in-network, coinsurance — and picked the plan with the lowest monthly premium because the number was the only one she understood. She spent $4,200 out of pocket that year. The plan next to it: $800. Same employer. Same year. Health insurance open enrollment in the US is a high-stakes annual decision made under time pressure, using terminology most new arrivals have never encountered, for a ...

🔄 Updated for 2026 — Roth IRA contribution limits, MAGI phase-out thresholds, and eligibility rules verified current as of last review 📖 Reading time: 18 minutes  |  ✍️ ExpatWiki Editorial Team T he first question a software developer from Chennai asked her HR department after starting her H-1B job in Austin was about the 401(k). The second was about health insurance. The Roth IRA never came up — not because nobody mentioned it, but because she assumed, like most expats do, that retirement accounts beyond the employer plan were something for citizens and permanent residents. Three years later, talking to a tax professional for the first time, she discovered she'd been eligible the entire time. The retirement account she could have started in month one — with tax-free growth compounding since then — simply didn't exist, because the question was never asked. A Roth IRA is available to anyone with earned income in the United States and a Social Security Number — inc...