Read it.
Use it.
Focused guides for the questions that need more than a quick answer. Each includes a worksheet to prepare your next conversation.
Guides for your next decision.
Build a TN employer evidence brief before drafting the letter
Read & prepare Applicant planningKeep an L-1A new-office record from approval to extension
Read & prepare Applicant planningCompare the E-2 evidence for a startup and a business purchase
Read & prepare U.S. destination planningCanadian RN planning for New York State
Read & prepare U.S. destination planningCanadian RN planning for California
Read & prepareSeven decisions, answered before you prepare.
Documenting a degree issued under an institution's former name
Your diploma names an institution that later merged into another. Treat that first as a records question: who issues transcripts today, under what authority, and what document connects the two names. Assemble those continuity facts before deciding what to order or how to describe the qualification. A merger changes an institution's name and administration; it does not convert the degree actually conferred into a different one.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Establish who holds the records today
- Describe the credential as it was conferred
- Keep translation and evaluation as separate questions
Working remotely from Canada when a U.S. offer arrives
You live in Canada and work remotely for an employer here, and a U.S. company has now made an offer. Two facts drive the analysis, and neither is your address: the citizenship you actually hold, and the work you would perform in the United States. Years of employment in Canada do not create Canadian citizenship, and permanent residence alone does not open the TN category.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- State your citizenships, not your residence
- Describe where the work would physically happen
- Ask which steps your citizenship actually implies
When the business runs on software licensed from another company
The enterprise you would buy or build depends on software it does not own — a platform, a booking system, a database licensed from a related or an unrelated entity. Before anyone attaches a value to that, record the terms: what the licence permits, how long it runs, whether it survives a change of owner, and whether the business could operate without it.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Read the licence before you price it
- Do not assume an intangible converts into investment
- Explain whether the enterprise can operate
Staging two U.S. locations that would share the same staff
The plan opens one U.S. site now and a second within the year, with several people working across both. Describe it as it will actually run — the premises, the resources and who performs which duties — rather than dividing a team on paper. A second address does not by itself establish a separate qualifying new office or automatically restart an existing approval period.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Document each site as premises, not as an address
- Describe shared duties without inventing headcount
- Plan for what the first year has to show
Tracing the employer through a reorganization that kept duties unchanged
Head office moved staff between entities last year: same desks, same duties, a new employer of record. For a transfer, the question is not whether the work changed but which legal entity employed the person, and whether a qualifying relationship exists with the U.S. company. Time already worked does not automatically reset, and it does not automatically carry across either.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Draw the entities and dates, then place the person
- Do not let unchanged duties answer a different question
- Compare the E-2 reading of the same structure
When a spouse would rather hold a TN than a TD
One spouse has an offer and expects to apply for TN. The other does not want to move without the ability to work and is asking whether a TN of their own is possible. That is a second, independent assessment — their citizenship, their profession, their credentials, their U.S. employer — and not a share of the first applicant's qualification.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Assess the second person on their own facts
- Keep TD limits distinct from what E and L spouses may do
- Watch who would own the U.S. employer
Comparing routes while an estate is still being settled
The money for either plan is expected to come from an inheritance, and the estate is not yet settled. Three separate facts decide what can be done now: who currently holds authority over the assets, what is genuinely available to you today, and how the source and path of the funds could be evidenced. An expected inheritance is not committed capital.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Separate authority, availability and source
- Understand what the EB-5 evidence must establish
- Read the Gold Card FAQ before assuming it is simpler