Read the general life across the border overview
Identify each person’s proposed activity before treating a family move as one authorization decision.
Write a separate activity record
Write one line per person, not one plan per household. Set down the assignment the principal will take up, the work the spouse hopes to find, and whatever the child intends to do — school, university, a summer job, unpaid volunteering — and record where each of those activities physically happens and who pays for it. Remote work performed from a U.S. address for a Canadian employer belongs on the list too, because it is the location of the worker, not the location of the payer, that raises the question. A single household budget that adds all of it together shows the family needs the income; it shows nothing about whether each person may lawfully earn it after arrival. Do the same for anything seasonal or short: brevity does not remove the authorization question, it only makes it easier to overlook.
Match each person to the status they will actually hold
Dependent permissions differ by category and by person. TD status, held by the spouse or child of a TN professional, allows study but not employment, so a spouse in TD who intends to work needs an independent basis of their own. Spouses in L-2 status, and spouses of E treaty investors and employees, are employment-authorized incident to that status — but that turns on holding valid spousal status, so confirm the individual’s own record rather than the household’s category. Children are different again: an unmarried child under twenty-one can hold derivative status and attend school, yet derivative child status carries no work permission in L-2 or E, and none at all in TD. Age is the hard edge. The child ceases to qualify at twenty-one, which in a multi-year plan is a date to work backwards from rather than a detail to discover late.
Keep immigrant and temporary plans distinct
Immigrant routes run on their own clock and do not lend permission backwards. Under EB-5 a spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one may generally be included as derivatives, subject to the applicable age-protection provisions, but the two-year conditional residence begins on immigrant admission or on approval of adjustment — not when the petition is approved — and the conditions come off only through the later petition to remove them. The Gold Card route proceeds through whichever EB-1 or EB-2 process applies to it, and its payment is a gift made by the applicant to the U.S. government alongside a processing charge; it is not an EB-5 investment, creates no EB-5 derivative rights, and its terms should be re-verified against the official program materials before money moves. Canadian citizenship and Canadian permanent residence also stay separate facts for this household: a PR card does not make anyone TN-eligible. Hypothetical example: a Morinville family plans an L-1A transfer in which the spouse wants to resume nursing and the nineteen-year-old wants part-time retail work. The spouse may work incident to valid L-2 status, but state licensure is a separate problem on a separate timetable; the teenager has no work permission in L-2 at all and would need an independent basis.
What else is on your mind?
Is a matching job title enough for TN?Can years of experience replace a degree for TN?Can my own U.S. company employ me under TN?Can my spouse work if I hold TN status?Editorial source review: 2026-09-08. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.
- Department of State — TN professional workers
- Department of State — 9 FAM 402.17
- USTR — USMCA Chapter 16 Appendix 2
- USCIS — fee schedule
- ICE — nonimmigrant classes that may study
- TN qualification and procedure regulation
- USCIS — L classification documentation and evidence
- Department of State — 9 FAM 402.12
- USCIS — employment authorization for certain spouses
- L definitions, foreign employment and new-office evidence
- 8 USC 1184 — specialized knowledge definition
- L1B specialized knowledge and offsite placement statute
- Department of State — treaty investors
- Department of State — 9 FAM 402.9
- USCIS — EB-5 investor program
- USCIS — business and investment visa overview
- USCIS — Child Status Protection Act
- Department of State — Visa Bulletin
- Current EB5 capital statute; not obsolete regulatory thresholds
- Direct qualifying employees and full-time positions
- Official U.S. government Gold Card FAQ