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.
Explain the interpretation behind a geological map
A Devon applicant should show which professional conclusions they will develop from the project data. A map can explain the subject without proving the applicant’s contribution or the full proposed duties.
Describe the geological questions and the decisions required to answer them. Attribute field data and interpretations to the people who actually produced them. The employer’s offer should account for material collection, mapping and other tasks rather than treating every activity associated with a geological project as the same professional function.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the analytical responsibility
- Select evidence with a clear purpose
- Document the qualifying applicant
Assess a Mexican citizen’s TN plan without treating Canadian residence as citizenship
A Devon resident may hold Mexican citizenship and Canadian permanent residence at the same time. Identify those facts separately before choosing the U.S. professional-worker process or deciding what a dependent relative needs.
Canadian permanent residence alone does not meet TN’s Canadian-or-Mexican citizenship requirement. Mexican citizenship can satisfy that particular condition, but the listed profession, qualifications, temporary entry and permitted professional work still require assessment. A Canadian address neither creates Canadian citizenship nor erases citizenship already held elsewhere.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Use citizenship actually held
- Distinguish the principal’s procedure
- Review accompanying relatives individually
Connect leasehold spending to the rights the enterprise actually receives
A Devon buyer’s construction budget should be read together with the lease. The question is what the money commits and enables, not simply whose name appears on a completed fixture.
Separate the landlord, the tenant, the investor and the contractor, and say plainly which of them is a party to each document. Read the permitted-use clause, the improvement obligations, the consent-to-alter provision, the reinstatement clause and the termination and assignment terms, keeping what has actually been executed apart from what someone expects the landlord to agree to later. Four papers usually decide the question: the signed lease, the work letter or improvement agreement, the contractor’s invoices with proof of payment, and the occupancy or trade permit for the use proposed. A photograph of a finished interior shows that money was spent; it does not show what the enterprise may lawfully do in the space. Nor does the building’s ownership settle anything on its own — improvements can be a genuine investment in premises the investor will never own, and a landlord-funded fit-out in a building the investor does own is still the landlord’s money.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the actual assets and rights
- Trace the commitment and financing
- Complete the operating and investor analysis
Use actual operating history when a registered company begins business
A Devon group may have registered a U.S. entity well before it began providing services. The L-1 new-office analysis should identify the actual period of doing business rather than assume the oldest corporate document settles the issue.
Build a single dated line for the U.S. entity and put each event on it: the date of incorporation, the date any registration or tax account opened, the date premises were first secured, the date of the first employee, and the date of the first invoice a customer actually paid. Those are five different facts and they routinely fall in different years. New-office treatment attaches where the qualifying U.S. organization has been doing business — providing goods or services regularly and systematically — for less than a year; it is neither triggered nor avoided by the date on the incorporation certificate. Do not manufacture transactions to make a dormant stretch look active, and do not treat the arrival of a large new customer as the birth of a new company when the entity has been trading throughout. Where the record genuinely is a new office, that is a category with its own evidence, not a weakness to disguise.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the activity behind each date
- Connect the applicant to the qualifying group
- Apply the role-specific new-office evidence
Distinguish transferring a manager from buying an unrelated business
A Devon business owner may compare a transfer within the existing group with acquiring an unrelated U.S. operation. The facts supporting one proposal should not be silently used as evidence that the other qualifies.
L-1 needs a qualifying parent, subsidiary, affiliate or branch relationship and continuing U.S. and foreign business. Establish one continuous full-time qualifying foreign year in the relevant preceding three years; ordinary foreign work can be managerial, executive or specialized knowledge. The proposed U.S. role must meet the requested standard. Ownership of an unrelated target does not retrospectively establish that employment history.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the actual corporate transfer
- Read the investment as its own arrangement
- Resolve duties and process before deciding
Separate a child’s study plan from a proposed company role
A Devon household may arrange schooling while a child is also invited to assist the principal’s employer. Identify the actual activity before assuming that an educational connection determines its immigration treatment.
The ordinary dependent relationship concerns an eligible spouse or unmarried child under 21. TD, E and L dependents may study while maintaining status, but enrolment does not extend that status. TD does not authorize employment; L and E dependent children do not receive the work authorization available to qualifying spouses. Immigrant CSPA does not extend temporary dependent eligibility.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Use the child’s own dependent conditions
- Describe the proposed company activity
- Maintain separate family records
Separate jobs created by an investor from employees sponsored for Gold Card
A Devon employer may discuss hiring workers for an EB-5 enterprise and sponsoring employees under the corporate Gold Card framework. These are different legal and financial roles; a headcount should not migrate from one proposal into the other without explanation.
For the EB-5 enterprise, identify each proposed qualifying permanent position, its duties, hours and actual employment evidence. For corporate Gold Card, identify each named person the company proposes to sponsor. Do not assume these are the same roster or that an employee appears in one because they appear in the other. A planned contractor conversion should remain a planned change until the underlying employment facts support the account. Assign someone to update both records when hiring or sponsorship plans change.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Prepare two different employee records
- Test the EB-5 employment and capital evidence together
- Compare the enterprise agreement with the sponsorship budget
- Keep employment starts distinct from immigration decisions