IN THIS GUIDE · The duties paragraph decides more than the title does
Start with the TN eligibility and application overview
Separate the professional activity from everything around it
Almost every professional job includes tasks that are not the profession. A surveyor drives, schedules, talks to landowners and files paperwork. None of that disqualifies anything, but the prearranged activity has to be professional work within the listed profession, and a description in which the listed activity is a footnote invites the conclusion that the applicant was engaged for something else. Write the task list in order of time actually spent. If the surveying is genuinely the substance of the engagement, that ordering will show it without any advocacy. If it is not, the ordering has told you something important before a reviewer does. A first reviewer should ask the employer for one completed example of the work product and compare it to the draft duties. That produces a usable correction: duties that are regular but secondary can stay, while a task that occupies the engagement must be named plainly. The point is accuracy, not a more elaborate letter.
Meet the profession’s own qualification rule, not a general one
Each listed profession carries its own requirement, and they are not interchangeable. Land Surveyor is satisfied by a baccalaureate or licenciatura degree, or by a state or provincial or federal licence. A degree in an adjacent field plus long experience is not a substitute unless the listing itself allows experience, and several listings do not. Check the entry for the specific profession rather than reasoning from another one. Where the credential was issued by an institution outside Canada, Mexico or the United States, the regulation calls for a reliable foreign-credential evaluation, which is a separate document and not a translation. Make a credential table with the exact regulatory item in one column and the original record in the other. It exposes a missing transcript, a licence whose scope is too narrow, or an evaluation that answers the wrong academic question. Solve that documentary mismatch before deciding that experience fills it.
Keep citizenship, employer and ownership on the record
TN requires Canadian or Mexican citizenship, prearranged professional work and temporary entry. A permanent-resident card in either country does not open the category. The employer may be a U.S. or a foreign entity, but a Canadian who solely owns or controls the U.S. enterprise receiving the services is engaged in self-employment, which TN does not permit, and appointing a nominal supervisor does not change that analysis. Disclose any ownership stake early and in writing. A Canadian citizen applies at a port of entry or through an I-129 petition; there is no visa stamp step at a consulate. Record ownership, board roles, signing authority, and who may end the engagement. Those facts settle whether the arrangement is genuine employment. A small ownership interest is not a detail to conceal; its disclosure lets the parties assess the issue before a border official asks about it.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.