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.
An employer letter that gives a job title and nothing else
Hypothetical example: a registered nurse from Waterloo, Quebec receives a support letter that names her position and start date and says nothing about the qualification the listing requires or the professional duties she will perform. The letter is polite and useless. It leaves the reviewer to guess which listed profession is intended and on what basis the applicant qualifies, and guessing is not how these decisions go well. The concrete decision is whether the employer can document the actual professional engagement now, or whether the role needs clarification before any request is made. Hypothetical example: a soil-science consultant has a strong résumé but an offer that never identifies the professional work; the employer must choose between supplying specific duties or postponing the application.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Ask for the elements the rule actually needs
- Keep the credential evidence with the letter
- Check the conditions the letter cannot fix
Proving citizenship when the passport has expired
Hypothetical example: a machinist from Waterloo, Quebec has an expired Canadian passport, a valid provincial driving licence and a permanent-resident card belonging to his spouse in the same envelope. Only one of those documents speaks to citizenship, and an expired passport speaks to it imperfectly. Sorting out which record establishes nationality is the first step, because in the treaty and USMCA categories nationality is a threshold condition rather than a formality. The decisive question is nationality, not the length or quality of Canadian permanent residence. Hypothetical example: a precision-optics technician has lived in Canada for decades but has not obtained citizenship; a current citizenship record, rather than the PR card, determines the TN threshold.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the document that evidences nationality
- Understand what permanent residence does and does not do
- Keep the two countries’ questions separate
When part of the price is a note secured by the business itself
Hypothetical example: a buyer from Waterloo, Quebec agrees to acquire a U.S. restaurant supply company, paying part in cash and the balance under a promissory note secured by the company’s own assets. Commercially this is ordinary. For treaty investor purposes the security matters: indebtedness secured by the assets of the enterprise itself is generally not treated as the applicant’s capital at risk, while indebtedness for which the investor is personally liable and which is secured by the investor’s own assets can be. The decision is whether the money is committed to a real enterprise under terms that expose it to loss, rather than merely reserved for a possible purchase. Hypothetical example: a water-treatment distributor signs a purchase agreement with a broad unilateral refund right; the buyer must decide whether to revise the commitment terms before relying on the payment.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Read the security, not the size of the note
- Recalculate what is actually invested
- Hold the other requirements steady while the deal changes
What the first year has to produce before the extension is considered
Hypothetical example: a company near Waterloo, Quebec opened a small U.S. distribution operation on a new-office petition approved for one year, and eleven months later the transferee is still packing orders personally. The extension will be assessed against what the office has actually become, not against what the original plan promised. That review is easier to pass when the first year was managed with it in mind from the beginning. The central decision is whether the planned U.S. operation can support the claimed role after its initial development period. Hypothetical example: a custom-orthotics company expects its transferee to handle all orders indefinitely; the staffing plan must show a credible transition away from routine production.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Treat the original plan as a commitment to be evidenced
- Watch whether the role became managerial in practice
- Keep the underlying conditions in view
A majority owner who is also a genuine employee
Hypothetical example: the operations director of a hotel group near Waterloo, Quebec owns fifty-five per cent of the Canadian company and draws a salary for a real job. Both routes are arguable. The intracompany transfer asks whether an employment relationship and a qualifying corporate relationship exist and whether the duties are managerial or executive. The treaty investor route asks about nationality, committed capital and control. The facts that make one easy often make the other harder. Choose the route from the facts that already exist: qualifying organizations and prior employment point toward L-1, while treaty ownership, committed capital, and investor direction point toward E-2. Hypothetical example: a commercial-aviation parts owner can fund a U.S. shop but lacks a qualifying foreign-employment record; that distinction changes the route analysis.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Majority ownership helps one analysis and complicates the other
- The preconditions differ in kind
- Compare what each route leads to
A child who will turn twenty-one while the process runs
Hypothetical example: a household near Waterloo, Quebec begins planning when the elder child is nineteen and a half, and the process they are considering routinely takes longer than that child has. Dependent and derivative eligibility for children is bounded at twenty-one. The date is fixed, the calculation is technical, and it is the single fact most worth establishing precisely at the very start of a family plan. The decision is whether every person’s relationship, age, passport, status, and travel plan are ready on the same schedule. Hypothetical example: a hospital-sterilization manager plans a move with a child who will soon age out; the family needs a dated timeline rather than an assumption that the principal’s category solves it.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Get the calculation, not a reassurance
- Know what dependent status allows in the meantime
- Plan the transition before it arrives
Choosing between two routes by asking what you can evidence
Hypothetical example: a family near Waterloo, Quebec has the funds for either route and cannot decide. A practical way to break the deadlock is to ask which route the family could actually document today. One requires a continuous, checkable history of where every dollar came from and how it travelled. The other is governed by a newer official framework whose terms must be read at source and re-verified before any commitment. The concrete choice is between an investment framework involving capital at commercial risk and job creation, and any officially established payment process to the U.S. government; they are not interchangeable products. Hypothetical example: a rail-systems entrepreneur has funds available but no documented investment project; the family must decide whether it can prove the EB-5 facts now rather than treating a payment proposal as equivalent.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Test the documentary burden honestly
- Read the newer framework at source rather than by analogy
- Look at what continues after the money is gone