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.
Finding the qualification rule that belongs to your particular listed profession
Hypothetical example: a laboratory technician at a water-testing firm serving Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton and the surrounding rangs is offered work at a laboratory in New York State. She has a college diploma rather than a degree, and assumes that settles the matter. It does not necessarily, because the appendix does not apply one standard to everybody. Each listed profession carries its own qualification rule, and one entry in particular is built for people in exactly her position.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The appendix is a list of professions, each with its own condition
- The entry built for technicians has an unusual shape
- Make the letter and the credential answer the same question
Permanent residence closes one door in Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton and leaves the others open
Hypothetical example: a Moroccan citizen who has held Canadian permanent residence for nine years lives in Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton and manages logistics for a regional equipment firm. He has been told he cannot work in the United States because he is not Canadian. That is right about one route and wrong about the rest, and the distinction is worth understanding before he concludes that nothing is available to him.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- TN is the route that genuinely requires citizenship
- The L classifications never asked the question
- Investment routes ask about nationality in different ways
A small investment can be substantial, and that is when marginality becomes the hard part
Hypothetical example: an equine dentistry and farrier services business run from Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton wants to establish itself in northern New England. Its assets are a fitted truck, portable equipment and a client list, so replicating it across the border costs comparatively little. The owner assumes his modest budget disqualifies him. It may not, because substantiality is measured as a proportion. What his low cost base does instead is push the whole weight of the case onto a different requirement.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Substantiality is a ratio, and you must establish the denominator
- The low cost base moves the fight to marginality
- Write the plan so a reader can check it
How the American subsidiary gets its money, and why that shapes the first year
Hypothetical example: a tree and shrub propagation group based in Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton is opening a growing operation in Michigan and intends to fund it through an intercompany loan rather than by subscribing for shares. The transfer of its production manager depends on a new-office petition, which is approved for one year at a time when almost nothing has happened yet. How the money reaches the subsidiary turns out to matter to both the first decision and the second.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What a new office is asked to show at the start
- A loan and a subscription do not look the same on a balance sheet
- Build the extension file during the year, not at the end of it
Choosing between a transfer and an investment when the Canadian company may be sold
Hypothetical example: the owner of a seed-cleaning and grain-handling business in Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton is negotiating to sell sixty per cent of it to an outside investment group, and separately wants a presence in the United States. Both routes look available today. Only one of them is likely to survive the transaction, and which one depends on facts that will be settled in the share purchase agreement rather than in any immigration filing.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- An L-1 claim rests on a relationship that must continue
- An E-2 claim rests on who holds the American enterprise
- Decide the corporate structure with both readings in mind
One move, three separate immigration questions inside a single household
Hypothetical example: a household in Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton is preparing to move because one parent has been offered a professional post in Ohio. The other parent has quietly received an offer of her own from a different employer in the same city, and their elder daughter turns twenty-one in fourteen months. The family is treating this as one relocation with one application behind it. It is three questions, and only the first of them has an obvious answer.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The dependant's status is not a household work permit
- The second parent needs her own answer, on her own facts
- The child's twenty-first birthday is a fixed date on the plan
Two large payments that are not competing prices for the same thing
Hypothetical example: someone in Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton has written two figures on a page — US$1,050,000 against US$1 million — and concluded that the Gold Card framework is the cheaper of two comparable options. The figures are close and the instruments are not remotely alike. One is capital that stays the investor's and is put at risk in a business. The other is a gift that leaves permanently and buys nothing but consideration.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What each payment is, legally
- What each one asks of you afterwards
- How to compare them honestly