Skip to content
L'ÎLE-DORVAL · L-1A FIELD GUIDE

Can the family assume the project end date is their status end date?

Sources checked:

THE DIRECT ANSWER

No. Commercial and immigration dates are separate. Check each person’s actual status documentation and authorized stay. Each household member is their own applicant, whatever the assignment letter says. The company's obligation ends at the petition; nobody at the employer is responsible for a spouse's employment authorization evidence or a child's school enrolment. Check what each person's own status documentation shows about authorized stay rather than reading dates off a project schedule. The two rarely coincide.

Keep permissions separate from the schedule

Qualifying L spouses are employment authorized incident to status with appropriate evidence. Children do not gain work permission solely through L dependent status. Study does not extend authorized stay; review household plans when the assignment changes.

Divide the household's questions by who has to act on them. A qualifying L spouse is employment authorized incident to status with appropriate evidence, so the step there belongs to the spouse and not to the sponsoring company. Children hold dependent status carrying no work permission, and study does not extend an authorized stay.

Where an assignment is expected to run toward the outer limit, generally seven years for L-1A, the household is planning around a temporary status, and decisions such as buying property or a spouse leaving a Canadian position deserve their own advice. Raise permanent-residence options with counsel separately; a work transfer is not a residence plan.