No. You can own a US company from anywhere in the world, with no visa, no green card, and no US partner. There is no citizenship or residency requirement to be a member of an LLC or a shareholder of a corporation.
And the reverse is equally true, which is the part that costs people money: owning a US company gives you no immigration status whatsoever. No visa, no residency, no path, no advantage. These are two entirely separate systems that happen to involve the same country.
Everything below is the detail around those two sentences.
A necessary caveat, and we mean it: we are not immigration advisors and this is not immigration advice. Immigration law is complex, individual, and consequential — get a licensed US immigration attorney for anything touching your actual situation. What follows is orientation so you know which questions are worth paying to ask.
What ownership actually permits
You may: form a US LLC or corporation; own 100% of it; be its sole member; serve as an officer or director; open business bank accounts; receive profits and distributions; sell the company; buy other US businesses through it.
You may do all of that from your kitchen table in Lagos, Lahore, or Lima, having never set foot in the United States.
There is no federal requirement that a US company have a US-resident owner. Some states require a registered agent with a physical address in that state — that's an agent for legal service, a service you buy for a modest annual fee, not an owner or a partner.
What ownership does not permit
You may not enter the US because you own a company there. You may not work in the US — including for your own company — without appropriate authorisation. You may not live there. Ownership creates no priority, no queue position, and no eligibility for anything in the immigration system.
The distinction that clarifies most confusion: owning a business is a property right. Working in the United States is an immigration matter. You can hold the first without the second, indefinitely.
The myths, individually
"Forming an LLC gets you a visa"
It does not. There is no visa category granted on the basis of having formed a company. This claim appears constantly in formation marketing aimed at founders in countries with difficult visa access, and it is straightforwardly false.
"If I invest enough, I get residency"
There is an investment-based immigrant visa programme (EB-5), and there are investor and treaty categories such as E-2 for nationals of countries with a qualifying treaty with the US. These are real, and they have substantial, specific requirements — investment thresholds, job creation, active involvement, treaty-country nationality, and legal process — that go far beyond forming an entity and putting money in it.
Forming an LLC is not a step on that path in any automatic sense. If these categories interest you, that's a conversation with an immigration attorney before you structure anything, because the structure requirements are specific and getting them wrong first can complicate matters later. [VERIFY CURRENT — programme requirements and thresholds change.]
"I can work for my own company remotely, so it's fine"
If you're outside the United States, working for your own US company from your home country is generally not a US immigration question at all — you're not in the US. It is a tax question in your home country, and potentially a US tax question depending on where the work is performed and where income is sourced. Different issue, different advisor.
Where it becomes an immigration question is if you're physically in the US doing work. That's where visa status matters, and where the rules are unforgiving.
"I'll just come on a tourist visa and run the business"
This is the one most likely to cause real harm.
Visitor status (B-1/B-2 or visa-waiver entry) permits certain business visitor activities — meetings, negotiations, conferences, consultations — and does not permit productive work in the US labour market. The line between "attending meetings about my business" and "working in the US" is a real legal line, and it is assessed by an officer at the border with wide discretion.
Consequences of getting it wrong range from refused entry to a finding that affects future applications for years. If your plan involves spending meaningful time in the US operating a business, that is precisely the situation where paying an immigration attorney is cheap relative to the downside.
"Owning a US company will help my visa application later"
Not in any mechanical way. It's not a factor that creates eligibility. In some narrow contexts a genuine business with real operations might be relevant to demonstrating ties or intent — but that's a nuanced, situation-specific judgement for an attorney, not a benefit you can count on.
"I need a US citizen partner to form a company"
No. This one persists because it's true in some other countries — several jurisdictions do require local ownership. The US generally does not, for ordinary business ownership.
Be especially careful with anyone offering to be your required "US partner," because the requirement they're solving doesn't exist. See our scams article on nominee arrangements.
"Non-residents can't get an EIN / bank account / merchant account"
All three are false as stated, though each has real friction. You can get an EIN without an SSN or ITIN (see our EIN article). You can open business accounts as a non-resident, mostly with fintechs, with real constraints around country and address (see our banking article). Payment processing is available with conditions.
Where things genuinely are restricted
To be balanced, some real limits exist:
SBA-backed loans. Effective 1 March 2026, SBA 7(a) and 504 loans require 100% ownership by US citizens or nationals with principal residence in the US. Green card holders were removed from eligibility entirely. This is a genuine, current, total exclusion for non-residents. [VERIFY CURRENT — this changed three times in fifteen months.]
Certain regulated industries. Some sectors have ownership restrictions or licensing requirements tied to citizenship or residency — aviation, broadcasting, defence-related industries, and various state-level professional licences. Uncommon among the businesses our readers run, but check if you're in a regulated field.
Some banks and providers, as a matter of their own policy rather than law, decline non-resident owners or particular countries. That's a commercial decision, not a legal prohibition, and it varies by provider.
Working in the US, as covered above.
What to do if you actually want to move
If your real goal is living in the United States rather than owning a business there, be honest with yourself about that early, because it changes what you should build.
Talk to a licensed US immigration attorney first, before forming anything. The right structure for an immigration objective may differ from the right structure for a purely commercial one, and unwinding a structure later is more expensive than getting advice first.
Be sceptical of anyone bundling immigration outcomes with business services. If a provider isn't a licensed attorney or accredited representative, they should not be advising you on immigration matters — and in the US, giving immigration advice without authorisation is itself a problem.
The genuinely useful framing
For the large majority of people reading this, the honest position is:
You want to build a business that earns in dollars, operates on US infrastructure, and gives you options. You don't need to live in the United States to do that. You need an entity, a tax ID, banking, payment processing, and customers.
That's a business project, not an immigration project, and it's entirely achievable from where you are.
If, in five years, that business is large enough that living in the US becomes a genuine question, you'll be having that conversation from a position of strength — with an operating company, real revenue, and something an immigration attorney can actually work with. That's a much better starting point than trying to reverse the order.
What we do
We help you build and operate the business. We do not provide immigration advice, and we won't imply that anything we sell affects your immigration position, because it doesn't.
Where a client's goals genuinely touch residency, we refer to licensed independent counsel — and we'll tell you plainly when the thing you're asking about is outside what we do.
For clients who are ready to move from formation into acquisition, our Equity Partners programme offers co-investment in specific deals — direct equity, real ownership, never pooled funds.
Keep reading
Once you've sorted the visa question, the next step is usually choosing the best US state for your LLC — our guide covers the Delaware vs Wyoming decision. You'll also need a US business bank account — our guide covers the top rejection causes. And for your annual US filing obligations, read our Form 5472 guide — the $25,000 penalty for non-filing applies regardless of whether your LLC had income.
For more context, see whether foreigners can buy a US business.