A spouse holds E-2 dependent status and is employment-authorized incident to status, so no separate permission to work is needed. Unmarried children under twenty-one may accompany and study. The complication is duration: E-2 renews indefinitely while the enterprise qualifies but leads nowhere on its own, and children age out of dependent status at twenty-one.
The status renews forever and the children do not stay young
Because the classification has no end point, families treat it as settled, and the person for whom it is least settled is the eldest child. Dependent status ends at twenty-one regardless of how well the business is doing, and at that moment the young adult needs a status of her own, commonly a student classification, or she must leave. Hypothetical example: an investor from Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton runs a successful stable in New York, and her husband, a dietitian, is working for a hospital group on the strength of his dependent status.
Their daughter is eighteen when they arrive. The family's planning should already include what she will hold at twenty-one, what it costs, and how long it takes to obtain. The same horizon should include how, if at all, this family expects to reach permanent residence, because the investor's own classification will not deliver it however many times it is renewed.