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.
Organizing a TN document file around the proposed professional work
A useful TN file connects citizenship, the proposed professional activity and the applicant’s qualifications. Begin with the actual job rather than a generic attachment list. The documents should let a reviewer trace each important statement to supporting evidence and identify unresolved questions before the applicable application or admission procedure. Files fail in predictable ways, and most of the failures are visible before anyone travels. A duty statement written to impress rather than to describe, an evaluation ordered before the profession was settled, a signature block naming an entity that is not the employer, or a bundle so long that the qualifying facts are buried — each of these can cost an applicant the trip. Read the file for what a skeptical stranger would question first.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Start with the employer’s account
- Connect credentials to the profession
- Finish with a procedure-specific review
- The four failures a reviewer notices first
- Unwinding a file built on the wrong assumption
Does Canadian permanent residence let me work in the United States?
Canadian permanent residence does not itself authorize U.S. work or meet TN’s Canadian-citizenship requirement. Your actual nationality, proposed activity and individual circumstances determine the questions to assess. A Mexican citizen with Canadian PR may explore TN, while other employment or investment routes must be examined on their own requirements. Deciding which of those questions applies is counsel’s job, not the employer’s and not the applicant’s. A recruiter can describe the role, a manager can confirm the duties, and the applicant supplies nationality, history and documents; none of them determines the classification. Where a household holds several nationalities, someone should be assigned to establish which one is actually being relied upon, because that single fact reshapes every subsequent question.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Separate nationality and residence
- Start with the intended activity
- Review procedure and family separately
- Who can answer which question
- When the wrong person decides
How should I calculate an E-2 investment budget?
There is no universal E-2 dollar minimum. Begin with the real cost of acquiring or establishing the enterprise, identify qualifying capital actually committed, and assess proportionality, operating readiness and non-marginality. A large balance or a seller’s recommended visa amount cannot replace the business-specific evidence. Budgets also move. A price is renegotiated, a landlord withdraws, equipment costs shift, or an exchange rate changes what a committed sum actually buys. Each of those alters the comparison the analysis depends on, so a budget prepared once and filed away stops describing the transaction it was built for. Treat it as a live document, dated at every revision, with a note of what changed and which evidence the change replaces.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Define the business cost
- Test the money being counted
- Assess what the budget enables
- Revisions that change the analysis
- Rebuilding a budget after the deal changes
Can an L-1A transfer support a new U.S. office?
A new-office L-1A case connects an established foreign operation with a credible U.S. launch. The applicant’s qualifying managerial or executive history, corporate relationship, secured premises and first-year operating plan must fit together. Incorporation alone does not establish eligibility, and the initial approval period is limited to one year. It is also worth naming what this route does not do. A new-office approval does not confer permanent residence, does not guarantee an extension, and does not certify that the business will succeed. It does not create a general permission to trade in the United States, which remains a matter of ordinary licensing and registration. Nor does it convert a founder’s ownership into qualifying employment abroad; that year has to have been served.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Connect the existing business to the launch
- Demonstrate the intended first-year role
- Prepare to document what happens
- The limits people read past
- A launch plan that proves the wrong thing
Should a founder begin with an L-1 or E-2 assessment?
Begin with the facts already in place: treaty nationality and qualifying investment for E-2; a qualifying corporate transfer, foreign employment and role for L-1. Neither route is universally better. Compare the actual enterprise and founder’s work before using costs, family preferences or a desired moving date to choose the conversation. Sequence that comparison deliberately. Establish the fixed facts first — nationality, existing corporate structure, employment history, where the money is — because those either exist or they do not and no amount of planning changes them. Only afterwards should anyone design around them. Deciding the route before the fixed facts are confirmed produces a plan that has to be rebuilt, and it usually consumes the time that would have made either route workable.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Build the transfer case first on paper
- Build the investor case independently
- Compare evidence gaps before procedural convenience
- An order for the comparison
- What ordering the work early makes possible
How do work, status and travel differ for accompanying family?
Each family member needs their own status and activity review. TD spouses and children cannot work; qualifying ordinary E-2 and L-2 spouses can be employment authorized incident to valid status, with appropriate evidence. Children do not receive the spouse’s work rights, and nationality can affect individual visa and travel procedures. Each of those propositions is proved by a specific document rather than by the household’s understanding of its own arrangement. Relationship is proved by civil records naming the parties. Status is proved by the admission record issued to that person. Permission to work is proved by the classification shown on that record, together with whatever the employment-verification process requires. Where a family cannot point to the document that proves a claim, the claim is still open.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Start with the people involved
- Check the proposed activity
- Coordinate records and practical plans
- What each record has to show on its face
- When the document does not say what was assumed
How should EB-5 and Gold Card be compared?
EB-5 uses qualifying commercial investment and job creation; Gold Card describes a government gift through a different immigration framework. Compare the legal requirements, financial commitment, household costs and later obligations together. Neither the investment amount nor the ability to make a gift guarantees permanent residence or citizenship. Comparisons go wrong in a particular way: the two are lined up as prices and the differences that matter disappear. One places capital at risk in a business that must create jobs; the other describes a gift paid to the Department of Commerce with a separate nonrefundable processing fee. Money behaves differently in each, the obligations afterwards differ, and neither can be evaluated by looking only at the headline sum.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify what the money becomes
- Compare the immigration pathways
- Use one complete household scenario
- How the comparison usually breaks
- The cost of comparing the wrong things