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.
Organize a diploma-route systems analyst’s TN record
Identify the precise listed credential route before arranging the experience evidence.
Record the institution, country, credential and duration. Computer Systems Analyst lists a degree or a qualifying post-secondary diploma or certificate plus three years of experience. A diploma requires at least two years of post-secondary education from an accredited Canadian or U.S. institution; the certificate route concerns the specified Mexican issuance and study requirements. Do not treat every certificate as equivalent.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Start with the actual qualification
- Explain what the experience involved
- Connect the credentials to the offered work
Separate Canadian residence documents from TN citizenship evidence
A Canadian permanent resident should identify actual citizenship before choosing the TN application route.
A Canadian PR card records Canadian immigration status; it does not establish Canadian citizenship. TN is limited to Canadian or Mexican citizens. Identify each passport and the applicant’s citizenship rather than assuming a long period living in Morinville changes eligibility.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Inventory the documents for the correct purpose
- Identify the professional and procedural questions separately
- Make a separate household record
Reconcile an E-2 partner change with the investment record
A partner’s exit can change enterprise nationality and operating authority even when the business keeps its name.
Set the ownership out twice — as it was and as it is — with effective dates, each owner named, each owner’s nationality, the percentage held and the votes attaching to it. Where an owner is itself a company, keep tracing until you reach individuals, since it is their nationality that counts and not the place where the holding entity was formed. The enterprise qualifies as a treaty business only where treaty-country nationals own fifty percent or more of it, and the applicant must separately hold that nationality personally. Incorporating in a U.S. state does the opposite of helping on this point: it establishes nothing about nationality, and a company formed abroad may still fail if its beneficial owners lack the treaty nationality. Note options, convertible instruments and any right of first refusal, because a percentage that is accurate today can be contingent on paper.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Prepare a before-and-after ownership table
- Read the control and capital documents together
- Recheck the business after the transaction
Plan a function manager’s first U.S. operating year
A function-manager proposal needs a credible account of how operational work will be performed while the applicant manages the function.
Two facts have to be settled before drafting: how long the U.S. entity has actually been trading, and which L-1 category is being requested. Where qualifying business activity in the United States has run for under a year, the new-office framework applies, and forming the company is not the same thing as doing business — regular, systematic provision of goods or services is. For a managerial or executive request in that situation, the year abroad must itself have been managerial or executive work, and the petitioner must show the U.S. operation will be able to support that role within twelve months of approval. Deciding this first matters, because a case built on a specialized-knowledge year abroad cannot be relabelled as managerial once the new-office rules are in play.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the operating start and category
- Show how execution will be covered
- Keep the L-1B branch and renewal evidence distinct
Compare a function-manager transfer with a partner-led investment
Decide whether the proposed facts support a qualifying group transfer, a treaty investment, or neither before choosing a label.
For the transfer route, start with the corporate map and the employment record. The petitioner and the foreign employer must be related as parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, and both must be trading — American operations and operations in at least one other country. A full year of continuous full-time qualifying employment abroad, inside the three years before filing, is the threshold. Periods in the United States are not credited toward the year, although occasional short visits do not break it. For the year abroad, managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge employment all count; the U.S. role must satisfy the category actually requested. Where the proposal is a function manager, the evidence must show management of an essential function — direction, discretion, senior standing within the organization — rather than skilled performance of the function’s own tasks. Ownership of shares in both companies by the same individual is not, by itself, the qualifying relationship.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- For L-1, establish the group and job
- For E-2, establish nationality and investment
- Compare the missing facts before selecting the process
Plan a household where a spouse and child want different work roles
Identify each person’s proposed activity before treating a family move as one authorization decision.
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.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Write a separate activity record
- Match each person to the status they will actually hold
- Keep immigrant and temporary plans distinct
Compare business-sale proceeds with corporate Gold Card sponsorship
An EB-5 contribution from sale proceeds and a corporate Gold Card gift establish different facts and obligations.
Begin with two named proposals: the person investing business-sale proceeds and the employee proposed for corporate Gold Card sponsorship. Record who owns the sale proceeds and when instalments actually arrive. Do not use the sale price as though it were all received, or a company’s sponsorship budget as though it identified an approved employee. If the employee leaves, preserve the original identity history and obtain current instructions for the changed proposal; do not silently substitute the replacement in receipts.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Separate the seller’s money from the employee’s application
- Turn the received proceeds into an EB-5 evidence account
- Compare contractual rights with the corporate gift terms
- Give each proposal its own decision calendar