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.
The listed profession that needs someone else's letter: a technologist and the supervising professional
Hypothetical example: Colette collects and analyses soil and water samples for an environmental consultancy in Lantzville and has a two-year technology diploma. A Washington firm wants her for the same work. Scientific Technician or Technologist appears in the USMCA professional appendix, but unlike most entries it is not satisfied by a credential alone: the work must be in direct support of a professional in a listed scientific discipline. Her file therefore depends on a document she cannot write herself, and it is the one most applicants forget to request. Hypothetical example: A Canadian architect offered a short Oregon engagement must decide whether a named U.S. firm will employ and supervise her, rather than assuming a consulting invoice will suffice.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What the entry actually asks for
- The letter to ask the employer for
- Assemble the rest around it
Permanent residence, citizenship and the years in between: planning while a status is still pending
Hypothetical example: Sanjay is a Canadian permanent resident living in Lantzville and working remotely as a data analyst. He is a citizen of another country and expects to be eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship in about two years. A U.S. employer wants him now. The instinct is to reach for the classification his Canadian colleagues use, and it is closed to him, because it depends on citizenship rather than residence. The useful work is deciding what to do with the intervening period rather than confirming the obstacle. Hypothetical example: A permanent resident who holds a Chilean passport must decide whether that nationality opens a treaty-investor option before postponing a U.S. offer until Canadian citizenship.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Why the permanent resident card does not help here
- Check the other passport before assuming the door is shut
- Sequence the next two years deliberately
Two owners, fifty-fifty: how each documents development and direction
Hypothetical example: Callum and Devon each run marine-service businesses out of Lantzville — one rigging and one mechanical refit — and have agreed to buy a haul-out yard in Washington State as equal partners. Both are Canadian citizens, so treaty nationality is satisfied and the enterprise's ownership qualifies. In a two-party equal venture, fifty per cent ownership can generally give each partner control when both retain full management rights and responsibilities; a tie-breaker is not automatically required. Their agreement should preserve and document those rights and explain how each will develop and direct the enterprise. Hypothetical example: Two Canadian ceramic-studio owners must decide whether their operating agreement gives either partner real authority before they release acquisition funds.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What develop and direct actually requires
- Record each partner's management rights before filing
- The rest of the case still has to be built
The first year is a test: what a new U.S. office has to be able to show at its extension
Hypothetical example: a Lantzville dealer in forestry and land-clearing equipment opens a branch in Montana and transfers its parts-and-service director to run it. A new-office petition, if approved, is granted for one year. Companies treat that year as a grace period and it is better understood as a measurement period, because the extension is decided on what actually happened rather than on what was projected. Writing the first-year plan with the extension in mind is the single most useful thing the company can do before it files. Hypothetical example: A Canadian maker of adaptive sports equipment must decide how many U.S. staff it can actually hire before presenting its first-year managerial plan.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What the initial petition has to establish
- What the extension asks a year later
- Keep the Canadian side alive and the record contemporaneous
When the transferee is also a shareholder: what a minority stake does to each route
Hypothetical example: a Lantzville land-surveying firm holds twenty per cent of a small Washington surveying company and employs the person both businesses want running the American operation. That single fact — an ownership stake that is real but not controlling — pulls in two directions. It may be enough to create a qualifying corporate relationship for a transfer, or it may not. It is plainly not enough for a treaty investor case without more. Deciding which route to build changes what the parties should negotiate. Hypothetical example: A Canadian manufacturer of climbing-wall hardware must decide whether to preserve group control for a transfer or buy a controlling U.S. stake for an investor route.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- For a transfer, the question is the relationship between the companies
- For a treaty investor case, the question is control by the individual
- Choose on consequences, not on which form is easier
Dependants in the middle of an assignment: school, the twenty-first birthday, and what happens if the job ends
Hypothetical example: a Lantzville household moves to the United States on a work assignment with two children, aged twenty and fourteen. Both may attend school. Neither may work. One of them will cease to be a dependant within the year, and no filing by the parents changes that. Families plan carefully for the principal's status and then discover that the dependent side has its own timetable, its own limits and its own failure mode, which is that everyone's status is attached to a job that could end. Hypothetical example: A Canadian animation-studio employee must decide whether her twenty-year-old son needs a student route before the family accepts a two-year transfer.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Study is permitted; employment is not
- The twenty-first birthday is a hard edge
- Dependent status ends when the principal's does
What each route asks of you after the money has gone
Hypothetical example: a Lantzville couple who have sold a business are comparing an immigrant investor petition with the gift-based programme. Most comparisons stop at the amounts, which is the least useful place to stop. The more revealing question is what each arrangement requires of the applicant in the years after the payment: what has to be sustained, what has to be proved again, who has to do something, and what could still go wrong. On that measure the two routes are not close relatives. Hypothetical example: A Canadian manufacturer of laboratory furniture must decide whether to accept business risk and job obligations or make a government gift with no investment return.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The investor route keeps asking questions for years
- The gift-based route is structured differently in kind
- Ask what happens if it does not work