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.
Prepare a Land Surveyor’s qualification and duty record
Explain the actual listed qualification without treating TN classification as universal professional-practice permission.
Land Surveyor lists a baccalaureate or licenciatura degree, or a state, provincial or federal licence. Record the exact credential and issuer. A field-training certificate is not automatically a listed professional licence. Degrees from institutions outside Canada, Mexico and the United States need reliable evaluation.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the credential that is being relied on
- Describe the professional responsibility
- Complete the professional arrangement
Check TN citizenship before relying on a Canadian professional licence
A professional licence can be relevant to a listed occupation without establishing the citizenship required for TN.
Canadian permanent residence or a Canadian licence does not make the holder a Canadian citizen. TN requires Canadian or Mexican citizenship. Record the actual nationality documents first rather than assuming professional recognition supplies immigration eligibility.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify citizenship separately from Canadian status
- Then assess the listed profession
- Check the accompanying household individually
Read an E-2 asset closing without double counting
Use the closing record to identify what has been paid, what has transferred and what the business still needs.
Build the arithmetic once and show it: purchase price, deposit paid, whether that deposit is credited against the price or sits on top of it, the balance due at closing, and anything held back afterwards. The commonest error in an asset purchase is presenting the deposit as a separate tranche of investment and then again inside the price, which inflates the total and invites a request for evidence that unravels the rest of the file. Then take each material condition — financing, landlord consent, licence transfer, a satisfactory inventory count — and say whether it has been met, waived, or is still outstanding, because a condition still live means the funds behind it are not yet irrevocably committed. Finally, tie the assets bought to what the business will actually do with them: equipment, inventory, goodwill and a customer list serve different functions, and a schedule of assets is only useful once it is connected to the operation it supports.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Reconcile price, deposits and balance
- Check rights that do not transfer automatically
- Apply the complete treaty-business test
Explain a vendor-supported L-1 new-office plan
Outside providers can be part of an operating model, but their contracts should not be presented as a fictional employee hierarchy.
Less than one year of qualifying U.S. business activity invokes the new-office framework. A registration or dormant entity is not equivalent to regular doing business. Establish the qualifying group and one continuous full-time foreign year within the relevant preceding three years.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Determine the office stage from business activity
- Show the L-1A manager’s work
- Keep the alternative knowledge case distinct
Compare outsourced operations with an asset-based treaty investment
An operating model using vendors does not itself decide whether L-1 or E-2 fits the applicant.
On the transfer side, the operating model is a fact to explain, not an answer. Establish the corporate relationship — parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate — and that business is being done on a regular basis both inside the United States and in another country. The beneficiary must show twelve continuous months of full-time qualifying employment with the group outside the country, falling in the three years before the petition. Presence in the United States does not add to the year, and brief visits are not treated as interrupting it. The qualifying year abroad may be managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge in character; the requested classification is tested on the U.S. duties, meaning primarily managerial or executive work for L-1A, or knowledge specific to this company’s product, process or procedures for L-1B. Where implementation is bought from vendors, attribute it to the vendor. A contracted provider is not a reporting line, and an organizational chart that absorbs another company’s employees into the applicant’s team misdescribes the very fact the managerial claim depends on.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- For L-1, establish the transfer and duties
- For E-2, establish the acquired business
- Identify the unresolved structural issue
Separate vendor work, family work and dependent permission
A business that uses contractors should not assume a spouse or child can fill a role under the principal’s permission.
Start by naming who performs each task and under what arrangement. For every family member, record the duties proposed, where the work is physically done, who directs it, and how it is paid — salary, contractor invoice, distribution, or nothing at all. Keep that list beside the company’s commercial staffing plan, which answers a different question: the staffing plan says how the business gets its work done, while the immigration question is whether each named individual holds a status that permits them to do it. Invoicing through a family holding company does not convert unauthorized work into contracting, and an arrangement described as unpaid still has to be examined rather than assumed to sit outside the rules, because it is the activity that is regulated and not merely the payment.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Map the proposed people and activities
- Read each dependent status on its own terms
- Do not substitute immigrant plans for present permission
Distinguish joint-account EB-5 capital from employer-paid Gold costs
Who can access an account and who pays an expense are starting facts, not complete immigration classifications.
Make a short record for each proposed transaction: whose money it is, who may initiate the transfer, who is the immigration applicant and where the money goes. Joint signing authority is not proof that the EB-5 applicant owns the entire account balance. Similarly, an employer paying an expense does not by itself identify the individual or corporate Gold Card route. Resolve these facts before comparing totals; otherwise the calculation may describe a different person’s resources or a different application.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify ownership, payment authority and the named principal
- Audit the joint-account investment documents
- Test what the enterprise promises to do and repay
- Reconcile the employer’s offer with official Gold Card obligations