1. In a zone contiguous to its territorial sea, described as the contiguous zone, the coastal State may exercise the control necessary to:
(a) prevent infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea;
(b) punish infringement of the above laws and regulations committed within its territory or territorial sea.,
2. The contiguous zone may not extend beyond 24 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.

In November 2011, ABC News reported on the story of Amit Aharoni, an Israeli startup entrepreneur who, after creating 9 American jobs, received a letter from the US Citizenship and Immigration Serice (USCIS) denying his visa request and notifying him to leave the country immediately. Aharoni left for Vancouver and tried to run his company (an online cruise booking service) remotely via Skype. That didn't quite work out, so he set to work on making his story public. After ABC World News picked up the story, USCIS reversed their decision within 24 hours. The moral is that running a startup remotely can be big enough of a pain to warrant mounting a media campaign, and that unless they manage to attract massive media attention, a startup entrepreneur without a valid visa may have to relocate their operations outside of the U.S.