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 architect's file is decided by the credential entry, not by the portfolio
Hypothetical example: Hamish designs lakeside houses from a small studio in Trent Lakes and has been asked to join an American practice working on shoreline residential projects. Architect appears in USMCA Appendix 2, and its entry is met by a baccalaureate degree or by a state or provincial licence. He has an enormous portfolio, a strong reputation and, as it turns out, a degree from a programme whose name does not obviously match the profession. The portfolio will not answer that question and the transcript might.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The entry names a credential, so start by reading the entry
- The letter has to describe architecture, in the words the list uses
- Registration to practise is a separate matter with its own timetable
A permanent resident card answers a Canadian question, not an American one
Hypothetical example: Declan is a citizen of Ireland and a permanent resident of Canada, working as an urban planner for a consultancy in Trent Lakes on shoreline zoning, official plan amendments and severance applications. He assumes his permanent residence puts him in the same position as his Canadian-born colleagues when an American planning firm approaches him. It does not, and the reason is narrow: the professional route he is thinking of turns on citizenship, and his citizenship is Irish.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The professional route reaches citizens, and residence is not citizenship
- Two routes that never asked about Canadian status
- What the card does do, and the trap of mixing the two systems
An asset-light design practice has to answer substantiality differently
Hypothetical example: Bianca is a landscape architect who runs a shoreline design-build practice from Trent Lakes, planning naturalized banks, terraces and outdoor living areas for waterfront properties. She wants to open the same kind of practice on an American lake. Her business needs a truck, a small yard, software and people, and almost nothing else, which sounds like an advantage until she meets the substantiality test, where a low total cost demands a very high proportion rather than a low one.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- A small total cost raises the bar rather than lowering it
- Marginality is the harder test for a practice built around one person
- Commit the money, keep the receipts, and know where the route ends
A new office is judged on what the first year was actually able to build
Hypothetical example: Mattias manufactures panelized cottage kits in Trent Lakes and wants to open an American subsidiary with an assembly yard and a sales operation serving lake regions across the border. He expects to run it himself for the first while. A new-office petition is approved for one year initially, and the extension at the end of that year is decided on what the company managed to do, so the honest question at the start is what twelve months can realistically produce.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Premises secured, not premises identified
- The role must be the role at the end of the year, and the evidence must support it
- The relationship, the year abroad and the extension all have to be built now
One acquisition, two entirely different things to prove
Hypothetical example: Rosemarie owns a cottage-country property management company in Trent Lakes that opens and closes seasonal properties, monitors them through winter and coordinates repairs. She has agreed to buy a similar company on an American lake and could structure it two ways: her Canadian company acquires it and transfers her into it, or she buys it personally. The purchase price is identical either way. What differs is which set of facts she then has to prove, and where each route eventually leads.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- If the company buys it, the corporate record does the work
- If she buys it herself, the money and the control do the work
- Ask where each road ends before choosing which to take
A household moves as four separate cases that happen to share an address
Hypothetical example: Tomiko is a Canadian citizen and an accountant in Trent Lakes whose practice serves construction contractors and seasonal-property owners. An American firm in the same niche has offered her a position, and Accountant is a listed profession. Her husband is a construction site superintendent, their elder child turns twenty next spring and the younger is eleven. Four people, four different analyses, and only one of them is about her.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The spouse's occupation decides his options, not his marriage
- The elder child is the reason to start now
- Citizenship, residence and status are three different things
Two ways to spend a million dollars that have almost nothing in common
Hypothetical example: Gervais develops recreational property around Trent Lakes, severing waterfront lots and building cottages on them, and has the liquidity to consider either route to permanent residence. He has been told the two are alternatives at a similar price. They are alternatives only in the sense that both involve a large sum. What happens to the money, what the applicant receives in return, and what can go wrong afterwards differ almost completely.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- One is capital at risk in a business, the other is a payment to the U.S. government
- What each route asks of the applicant afterwards
- Where the family arithmetic and the verification duty land