Photos contributed.

When Cristina Foanene and her husband arrived in the United States in 2006, they were given six months.

The couple and their young daughter entered on a visitor visa, quickly realizing that the only way to remain legal was to invest — heavily — in a business. That meant securing an E-2 investor visa, transferring substantial funds from Romania and spending nearly all of it to establish operations.

The business they built — MCS Glass, named for Marius, Cristina and their daughters whose name begins with “S” — began modestly. Marius, a trained attorney in Romania, had opened a small glass company prior to relocating. In the Valley, the couple leaned on that experience, this time in a new country with new rules and far higher stakes.

For years, the couple renewed their investor visa every two years, paying between $5,000 and $7,000 in legal fees each cycle. In 2015, they began the process to become permanent residents. Around that time, they were approved for something that would permanently change the trajectory of their company: a U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)-backed loan.

Through the assistance of the SBA, the family purchased its first building and, in 2016, moved into a custom showroom. A second SBA-backed loan followed in 2018, enabling the expansion of the company and additional hiring.

Without those two loans, Cristina said the business would not look the same.

“If it wasn’t for the SBA, we wouldn’t be able to be where we are today,” she said. “If you asked me ‘Would you be successful without the SBA?’ I don’t know; only God knows.”

For many prospective business owners, that success may be out of reach after new federal policies, which go into effect on March 1, look to restrict loan approvals, tightening the process to include only U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals residing within the country.

The U.S. SBA Office of Advocacy estimates that roughly 18% of business owners with employees and nearly 23% without employees are immigrant-owned, with over 35% of food-service businesses owned by immigrants.

For Cristina, the loans did more than finance square footage; she described the psychological weight of sitting before lenders who knew little about them and convincing them to believe in their vision.

That belief, she said, generated accountability. Failing would not only disappoint themselves — it would disappoint people who took a chance on them.

“For us, it was a matter of pride, but in a good way,” Cristina said. “They [SBA] believe in the right people and we didn’t have any room to disappoint them.”

Today, MCS Glass employs around 25 people between office staff and installers. What began with just the couple and one employee has grown into a company supporting dozens of families each week.

“Twenty-five people every Friday, they get to take their checks home, and they’re able to put food on their table,” she said.

One of the individuals she credited for helping develop their business was Frank Gallegos, executive director of Cen Cal Business Finance. He recently expressed concern about new SBA policy shifts barring businesses with any legal permanent resident (green card holder) ownership from applying for loans, reversing longstanding eligibility rules and potentially impacting business development for non-citizens.

Gallegos noted that roughly 10% of business owners that he works with are green card holders, running counter to the SBA’s mission of expanding access to capital for expanding projects, he said.

“These people legally immigrate, they come here, they’re living the American dream,” he said.

Cristina, who emphasized that they followed every legal pathway available — from investor visas to permanent residency to citizenship — said that while legal status should matter, citizenship alone should not be the dividing line for access to capital.

“I think, as long as you are here legally, on a status that gives you a legal ground, I think you should have the opportunity to do an SBA loan,” she said.

Cristina described finally receiving her U.S. passport as one of the happiest days in her life, validation that over a decade of work had paid off.

“America is the country who made our dreams reality,” she said. “We are extremely proud to be Americans.”

For immigrant founders now holding green cards but not citizenship, the pathway to financial opportunity may grow steeper. Traditional bank loans often require longer credit histories or larger down payments than many entering the country simply do not have; private financing can carry higher interest rates; venture capital is rarely available to small, traditionally family-operated businesses.

With those funding opportunities potentially drawing to a close on March 1, future businesses like Cristina’s have a much more challenging road to establishing a business.