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.
Preparing an accurate TN history after an earlier refusal
After an earlier refusal or a significant discrepancy, gather the complete available record before preparing a new submission. A factual chronology helps an adviser understand what happened and what has changed. Rewording a letter without reviewing the earlier issue can leave the underlying problem unresolved. Sequence the work: freeze what you already hold, list what is missing and who holds it, request those items, and only then decide what a new submission should say. Reversing that order produces a polished packet built on unverified recollection, and the gap it leaves is usually the one the earlier decision turned on. Nothing in this ordering establishes that a previous refusal has been overcome.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Preserve the records as received
- Build a chronology without advocacy
- Resolve contradictions openly
- Freeze first, request second, draft last
- What cannot be started early
Can I use a Canadian colleague’s U.S. application checklist?
Use another person’s checklist as a source of questions, not as your procedure. Canadian PR does not make your citizenship, proposed activity or family circumstances identical to a Canadian colleague’s. Establish what their instructions assumed before relying on them for your own work or visa preparation. Ask for the evidence behind the borrowed list: which official instruction it was drawn from, when, and for which nationality and category. A checklist whose source cannot be identified is somebody’s memory in list form, and the items it omits are invisible precisely because nobody wrote them down. The document that settles whether an item applies to you is the current official instruction, not the copy that happened to work for a colleague.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the checklist’s assumptions
- Compare the substantive facts
- Replace copying with targeted review
- Test the checklist against a source
- What a document has to show on its face
Can a founder’s valuation of intellectual property supply E-2 capital?
Intellectual property can require a supported valuation and clear ownership or transfer evidence. A founder’s estimate, fundraising target or hours worked does not automatically establish the amount of qualifying capital. Identify the right actually contributed and the evidence that reasonably supports its value under the applicable investment guidance. Where these claims fail, they fail in a familiar way: the number is decided first and evidence is then gathered to support it. Working in that direction produces a valuation that cannot survive a question about method, and the enterprise loses not only the intangible claim but its credibility on the rest of the capital explanation.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Prove the right before pricing it
- Use supportable valuation evidence
- Reconcile development spending and asset value
- The failures that recur
- The cost of unwinding an intangible claim
What if the new office changes its business model?
A launch may develop differently from its original forecast. Document the change and ask counsel whether it affects the L-1 petition, qualifying role or relationship before relying on the old narrative. Commercial adaptation is not a reason to conceal what the business actually does or to assume immigration requirements disappear. Decide who is responsible for noticing. A new office changes direction through ordinary commercial decisions, and unless someone is named to review those decisions against the petition’s description, the divergence tends to be discovered by whoever prepares the extension, long after the facts have been created and recorded elsewhere in the company’s own files. Name that person before the office opens.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the material difference
- Assess the role after the change
- Keep an honest chronology
- Who notices, who decides, who files
- The role the transferee cannot fill alone
How should a restructuring be reviewed when comparing L-1 and E-2?
A merger, share transfer or asset movement can change the evidence supporting both routes. L-1 may depend on continued qualifying relationships; E-2 may depend on treaty ownership and investor direction. Compare the position before and after the transaction, with effective dates, rather than assuming an existing approval follows every business change. When the transaction has already happened, stop comparing routes in the abstract and establish what the facts now are. Both analyses run on the post-closing position: which entities exist, who owns them, who directs the enterprise and where the employee sits. A comparison built on the pre-transaction structure answers a question nobody is asking any more.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Map the transaction’s legal effect
- Review the investor elements after the change
- Coordinate evidence and operational timing
- Re-run each test on the new facts
- Fix the dates before the argument
Can a spouse work while a change from TD to L-2 is being planned?
A planned change does not give a TD spouse the work rights associated with qualifying L-2 status. Review the actual current classification, procedural steps and effective evidence before employment begins. The principal’s new opportunity or an intended filing should not be described as completed authorization for the spouse. Be clear about what this question does not cover. Nothing here decides whether the principal’s new role qualifies, whether a change of status can be requested from inside the United States, or what happens if the family travels while a request is pending. Those are separate questions with separate answers, and a spouse’s work authorisation depends on the outcome of all of them.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the present position
- Review both people’s steps
- Confirm evidence before the start date
- Where the misreading happens
- What the route does not reach
Does government approval make the financial decision safe?
An immigration decision and an investment outcome are separate. EB-5-related approval does not guarantee project performance or repayment; Gold Card vetting does not make a government gift a recoverable asset. Evaluate legal progress and financial consequences on their own evidence before treating an official milestone as financial protection. Take the decisions in order. Establish what each route actually is before comparing them, then check eligibility against the facts, then look at money. Reversing that sequence, starting from the amount available and working back to a route, tends to produce a comparison of prices between two things that are not the same kind of transaction at all.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify what was actually approved
- Examine the financial terms separately
- Reject guaranteed-residence arithmetic
- Order of questions before order of payments
- Which steps cannot be reversed