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.
When the TN offer is withdrawn while the file is being assembled
An offer withdrawn during preparation changes the facts the file is supposed to describe. TN rests on prearranged professional employment that exists when the application is made, so a letter the employer has retracted no longer describes an arrangement. Before deciding what to do next, establish in writing what has been withdrawn, by whom, and whether anything remains. Two facts control what happens next: whether a professional offer exists today, and from whom. Everything else in the file is preparation that either attaches to that offer or attaches to nothing. Ask the employer directly, in one email, whether any offer remains open in any form, and keep the reply.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Fix the date the offer stopped being current
- Do not present a document that no longer describes the arrangement
- Rebuild around whatever employment is now proposed
Separating tax residency from the citizenship a category requires
Years of Canadian tax filings do not establish the Canadian or Mexican citizenship required for TN. Bring actual citizenship and Canadian status documents to the immigration review, and identify tax questions separately for qualified advice. Do not use a tax classification as a substitute for the facts a U.S. category requires. Bring the documents themselves to the first meeting rather than a description of them. A passport in hand answers a nationality question in seconds, while a summary of what someone believes their status to be generates a second meeting.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- List status and nationality documents separately
- Do not read a tax treaty as an immigration rule
- Sequence the two conversations
Accounting for payments made before the price allocation was settled
Money usually starts moving before a transaction's final structure exists: a deposit, a supplier prepayment, professional fees, an equipment order. Those payments are neither automatically part of a qualifying E-2 investment nor automatically excluded because they came early. What matters is who received the money, for what purpose, and whether it is irrevocably committed to the enterprise. Start the schedule before the structure is settled rather than after, because reconstructing payments months later depends on documents that may not have been kept. A line entered on the day a payment is made costs nothing; the same line reconstructed from a bank statement costs an afternoon and proves less.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Reconstruct each payment as its own line
- Distinguish a commitment from a mere expenditure
- Settle the allocation before it hardens
Testing whether the proposed executive actually decides anything
An executive title on an organization chart describes a label, not authority. For a new-office L-1A, what counts is what the person will actually decide and who can overrule them. Before anything is drafted, find out whether documented decision rights exist — and if they do not, whether the company intends to create them and by what instrument. Ask who currently signs what, and get the answer from the person who actually signs rather than from the person describing the structure. Those two answers differ more often than anyone expects, and the difference is the whole subject of this page.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Find the documents that grant authority
- Describe the first year's duties honestly
- Consider whether a different capacity fits the facts
When a planned transfer turns into a personal buyout
Halfway through planning, the arrangement changes: rather than moving as a salaried employee of a related company, the applicant will buy a business personally. That is not the same plan under a different heading. Who invests, whether an employer relationship survives, and who carries the risk are different facts, and the analysis restarts from them. Ask when the change was decided and by whom, then check whether anything has already been said or filed on the old basis. Where it has, that is a correction to raise now rather than a fact to leave sitting in a file that has moved on.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Write down exactly what changed
- Test the employment history separately from the ownership
- Rebuild the documents instead of converting them
One household, several nationalities: planning the steps person by person
A household can hold passports from more than one country. Dependent status for a spouse or child depends on the principal's category, but the documents each person holds are their own, and the steps that apply to one member are not automatically the steps that apply to another. Build one record per person before any date is confirmed. Give each person's record a single owner and a single place to live, because the failure in a multi-person file is almost never a missing rule; it is a document nobody was responsible for.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Record nationality and documents for each person
- Keep dependent status separate from a person's own eligibility
- Sequence the household's decisions
Signing authority over company funds is not personal capital
Being able to sign on a company account does not establish that its funds are the applicant's investment capital. Identify ownership, authority and the legal basis for any proposed payment. An EB-5 review needs the lawful source and path of the applicant's qualifying investment; a bank transfer alone does not explain those rights. Begin with the ownership documents rather than the bank records, because ownership determines what the bank records can mean. Where the register and the governing agreement disagree, resolve that first: everything downstream depends on which of them is correct.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Separate the three things a bank account hides
- Trace the path, not just the balance
- Compare with the Gold Card on its published terms