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 consultant's file: why an engagement letter decides a management consulting request
Hypothetical example: a Parksville restaurant group has a small American affiliate that wants a Canadian colleague to spend a year restructuring its purchasing and labour scheduling. Management Consultant is on the trade agreement's professional list, and it is among the entries examined most closely, because the work is advisory, often contract-based, and easy to confuse with ordinary employment or with running one's own business. What determines the outcome is not the applicant's competence but how the engagement is described and by whom.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What the entry requires and what it implies
- Ask the employer for these three things
- Assemble the supporting record around the engagement
Which spouse should be the applicant when one holds citizenship and the other does not
Hypothetical example: a Parksville couple both work in hospitality. One is a Canadian citizen; the other has been a permanent resident for eleven years and holds a passport from elsewhere. They assume the more senior career should lead the application. For at least one classification that is the wrong way round, because eligibility turns on citizenship rather than seniority. Choosing the principal by the rule instead of by the job description can open a route the household had written off.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Two classifications ask about nationality, not residence
- Make the eligible spouse the principal where the facts allow
- Keep the second passport and the Canadian status in view
How much is substantial when the business is inexpensive to buy
Hypothetical example: a Parksville facilities-maintenance contractor is buying a small janitorial company in Washington State for a price that would not buy a house. The owner keeps asking what the minimum investment is, and there is no published minimum. The requirement is that the investment be substantial in relation to the total cost of purchasing or establishing this enterprise, which means an inexpensive business demands a proportionally higher commitment rather than a lower absolute one.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The test is a proportion, and the denominator is this business
- Count everything that is genuinely committed
- A cheap business raises the marginality question loudly
An entity incorporated three years ago can still be a new office
Hypothetical example: a Parksville seniors' care operator incorporated an American company three years ago to hold a property option, gave it a registered agent and a bank account, and never traded through it. It now wants to transfer a manager and assumes the entity's age means a straightforward petition. Age is not the test. What matters is whether the entity has been doing business, and a company that has provided no goods or services is treated as a new office regardless of its incorporation date.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Doing business has a definition
- What a new-office petition then requires
- Choose deliberately between waiting and filing now
Offered equity or offered a transfer: two routes with different endings
Hypothetical example: a Parksville hotel general manager is offered two things by the group she works for. It will transfer her to run an American property, or it will sell her a controlling stake in a smaller U.S. operation and let her run it as owner. Both are real offers and both can support a route. They differ most in what happens at the end: one depends on continuing employment and has a ceiling, the other depends on the business continuing to qualify and has no direct path to residence.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The transfer route: employment, and a clock
- The ownership route: control, and no automatic sequel
- Decide on the ending, and on the household
When the second income decides the route: dependent work rights compared
Hypothetical example: a Parksville household has two working adults and a mortgage that assumes both salaries. One has an offer that could be pursued through more than one classification. The families who get this wrong compare the routes on the principal's side, choose the simpler one, and discover afterwards that the accompanying spouse may not work at all. Dependent work authorization is not uniform across classifications, and for a two-income household it is often the most consequential difference of all.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The rules are not the same, and the gap is wide
- Remote work is not the workaround it appears to be
- Assess the spouse before choosing the principal
Planning an exit around two very different timelines
Hypothetical example: a Parksville owner intends to sell her business within three years and wants her U.S. position settled by then. That single constraint tells her more about the two routes than any comparison of amounts. One has a published structure with stages that are long and measurable, including a two-year conditional period. The other was created by executive action, and its procedures and timing can be adjusted, which makes any date she is quoted a much weaker planning input.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The investor route has a long, described shape
- The gift-based route has a shape set by executive action
- Build the plan on what you control