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.
Telling a professional membership apart from a licence in a TN file
A TN profession is assessed against its own credential requirements, and those requirements differ from one profession to another. Before ordering documents, write down the exact profession being claimed and the exact credential that route calls for. Then check what each organization named in your file actually issues. A membership record and a licence to practise answer different questions, and only the applicable profession route decides which of them is relevant. Do not assume a licence substitutes for a degree, or a degree for a licence, across every profession. TN also requires Canadian or Mexican citizenship, prearranged qualifying professional employment and temporary entry; a professional credential alone does not establish the whole case.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Ask what the organization actually grants
- A worked example of the gap
- Sequence translations and evaluations after the route is fixed
Two documents, two spellings: sorting identity from citizenship
A difference in spelling between a permanent resident card and a foreign passport raises an identity question: do these documents describe the same person, and what event explains the difference? Whether you hold the citizenship a U.S. category requires is a second and separate question. Answer them one at a time. Canadian permanent residence alone does not supply the Canadian citizenship the TN route is built on, and a tidy identity record does not create a citizenship you do not have.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Set out the identity chain first
- Keep the second question separate
- Prepare the procedural questions
Reading a budget that funds the business from sales it has not made
An E-2 review considers capital that has actually been placed and irrevocably committed to a real operating enterprise, and whether that enterprise meets the non-marginality requirement. Sales the business has not yet made are a forecast. A budget that buys equipment out of next year's revenue may be a sensible commercial plan, but it does not show what committed capital shows. Separate the categories before adding anything up, and do not present projected turnover as though it were equity already at risk.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Build three lists instead of one total
- Where the categories usually blur
- Keep the forecast, and know what it is for
What an unsigned letter of interest can and cannot support
Letters of interest and executed contracts do different work in a new-office file. An unsigned expression of interest may help explain why a revenue forecast is plausible; it does not show that the U.S. entity is doing business. Initial new-office approval is limited to one year, and for L-1A, the operation must support a managerial or executive role within one year and the evidence must show how it will do so. Sort every pipeline document by what it can actually support before the plan is written around it.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Sort the correspondence by its status
- Where an enthusiastic plan overstates itself
- Prepare now for the extension conversation
An equal partnership with a deadlock clause: read the control terms first
A fifty-fifty partnership is not automatically comfortable for either route, and it is not automatically fatal to either. For E-2, the nationality of the enterprise and the investor's ability to develop and direct it are assessed on the actual terms of the arrangement, not on a share percentage alone. For L-1, the question is a qualifying relationship between the companies together with the individual's qualifying employment. Read the agreement in full before deciding which route the facts fit.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Extract the control terms from the documents
- Test the arrangement against each route separately
- Keep the two analyses from borrowing each other's facts
Planning when the principal is away often and the dependents stay
Frequent travel by the principal applicant is a fact to describe accurately, not a number to manage. Dependent status rests on the principal's status and on each person's own admission record, so begin by writing down what every member of the household actually holds and until when. There is no universal rule that a fixed number of days outside the country ends a dependent's status, and no figure circulating informally should be treated as a safe limit.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Record the basis, not just the household
- Describe the travel pattern as it really is
- Cover availability and the open questions
One project, several siblings: whose application is it?
A proposal that says a jointly funded project will bring the whole family is describing something the rules do not treat as one application. Derivative eligibility runs to a spouse and to qualifying children, not to adult siblings. If several siblings want status, identify which person would hold the qualifying basis and what separate basis each of the others would need. Then look at whose money is whose, because a pooled account can make that impossible to show later.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Split the funding record person by person
- How a pooled account erases the record
- The Gold Card is a different instrument