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.
A nurse's TN file is decided by which state issued the licence, not by how good the resume is
Hypothetical example: Fumiko is a Canadian citizen and a registered nurse at a long-term-care home in Minden Hills, recruited by a hospital system that operates facilities in three states. Registered Nurse appears in USMCA Appendix 2 and its rule is met by a state or provincial licence, so her Ontario registration answers the profession question. The recruiter has been vague about which facility she will be assigned to, and that vagueness is the problem, because the licence that matters is the one issued where she will actually work.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The profession's rule and the practising licence point at different jurisdictions
- Health-care occupations carry a certification requirement that is easy to miss
- What the employer's letter must say once the facility is known
A permanent resident card is not a passport, and the routes that remain are worth knowing
Hypothetical example: Harjeet is a citizen of India who has held Canadian permanent residence for six years and works as a dietitian for a rural health team serving Minden Hills. An American employer has offered her a clinical nutrition post and told her that, as a Canadian resident, she can simply present herself at the border. She cannot. Dietitian is a listed profession and her credentials would satisfy its rule, but the category is limited to citizens of Canada and Mexico, and a permanent resident card does not supply that.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Where the requirement actually bites
- The routes that are nationality-neutral, and the one that is not
- What to ask the American employer instead
Substantial is measured against the price of the business, not against a number somebody remembers
Hypothetical example: Bronwen runs a Minden Hills company that supplies adaptive paddling equipment and runs accessible outdoor programs. She plans to open an American centre offering the same programs, and has been told by two different people that she needs a specific dollar figure to qualify as a treaty investor. There is no such figure. Substantiality is proportional: it is weighed against the total cost of buying an established enterprise or of establishing a new one, so the amount she needs depends entirely on what she is building.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- How the proportion is assessed
- What counts as committed capital, and what quietly does not
- The proportion is only half the test
A new office gets one year, and the extension is judged on what actually happened in it
Hypothetical example: Lucía owns a Minden Hills consultancy that formulates feed and nutrition programs for livestock operations and equine facilities. She has incorporated an American subsidiary to serve clients across the border and intends to transfer herself into it as its manager. Because the subsidiary has not yet been doing business for a year, this is a new-office petition, which is approved for one year initially rather than for the longer period an established entity can receive, and that first year is later examined.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What has to exist before the petition, not after it
- The business plan is the promise the extension will be measured against
- The founder problem, and how to avoid it
Transfer into your own American company, or buy one: the same owner, two different bargains
Hypothetical example: Ottmar is a management consultant who owns a Minden Hills firm handling billing, coding and compliance administration for small clinics. He could incorporate an American subsidiary and move himself into it as an intracompany transferee, or he could buy an established American medical-billing company and enter as a treaty investor. Both are genuinely open to him. They differ in what he has to have already done, what his spouse may do, and how each one ends, and those three differences usually decide it.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What each route asks him to have done already
- What each does for the second adult in the household
- How each one ends, and the question to ask before choosing
One offer letter, three separate immigration questions around the kitchen table
Hypothetical example: Vidal is a Canadian citizen and a recreational therapist in Minden Hills who has accepted a post at an American rehabilitation hospital. His wife Ronke is a registered veterinary technician with twelve years in practice, and their elder daughter turns 21 in eleven months. The household has been treating the move as one decision. It is three: his route, her right to work, and their daughter's own status, and only the first of them is answered by his offer letter.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- His route is the straightforward one
- Her occupation is not on the list, and dependant status will not rescue it
- Their daughter needs her own plan before the birthday, not after
One route buys a business risk, the other buys nothing back at all
Hypothetical example: Ngozi owns a Minden Hills company that provides scheduling, payroll and regulatory administration to home-care agencies and a long-term-care operator. She has capital available and wants permanent residence for herself, her husband and their two teenagers. Two routes are being suggested to her, and they are frequently described as alternatives of the same kind. They are not. One places money into a business at risk; the other gives money away and never returns it in any circumstance.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What happens to the money under each
- What the family costs under each
- What each requires of her afterwards, and the standing caution