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.
Who needs the final TN documents when several people coordinate a move?
When an employee, HR team and adviser coordinate TN preparation, a completed document can still be missed at the handoff. Agree who issues each record, who reviews it and who needs the final version. A controlled distribution plan keeps participants working from the same approved facts without sending sensitive information more widely than necessary. Distribution has limits running in both directions: some people on the thread do not need the file at all, and some documents cannot do the job they are being handed. A handoff plan that names recipients without naming what each record is capable of proving simply moves the confusion faster. Set both boundaries at the same time, before the first attachment leaves anyone’s outbox.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Assign document owners and recipients
- Confirm receipt of the final signed materials
- Route late corrections through the same chain
- What the handoff plan does not cover
- Who should not receive the file
Should I plan for temporary work and permanent relocation separately?
A Canadian PR may have a long-term U.S. goal and an immediate work opportunity, but those are separate planning questions. Canadian residence does not supply U.S. permanent residence or work authorization. Explain both objectives honestly and ask for an assessment of the actual pathways rather than assume one step guarantees another. Two timelines are involved and they are rarely the same length, so the order in which they get examined matters. Begin with the question carrying an immediate deadline, usually the work opportunity, and establish what it requires on its own terms. Then take up the longer objective using the facts that first exercise produced. Working in the reverse order tends to bend the immediate assessment towards the outcome someone hopes for.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Define the immediate proposal
- State the longer-term intention
- Keep decisions and evidence distinct
- The question that has to be answered first
- What long-term planning can preserve early
How should currency conversion affect an E-2 capital schedule?
A Canadian-dollar budget and U.S.-dollar enterprise receipt may differ because of conversion rates and charges. Show actual movements and conversion evidence rather than using an old estimate as a completed contribution. Currency reconciliation supports the investment record, but it cannot establish substantiality without the business-cost and commitment analysis. Conversion is an evidentiary problem before it is an accounting one. Every figure in the capital schedule should trace to a document a reviewer can read without narration, and where it cannot, the schedule is recording a belief rather than a movement of money. Paragraphs below set out which record settles each link in the chain and what that record has to show on its face.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Preserve each conversion record
- Separate forecast and actual columns
- Review any resulting funding gap
- What each link in the chain must show
- Where a schedule stops being evidence
What if the launch is delayed after new-office approval?
A delayed lease fit-out, hire or customer launch can affect the business plan without changing immigration deadlines automatically. Identify what the delay changes about operations and the transferee’s duties, then seek advice using the actual approval and status records. Do not assume unused time creates a fresh initial year. Delay itself is rarely what causes the harm; the responses to delay are. Three of them recur: the assumption that a later launch resets an immigration clock, the decision to have the transferee cover operational work meanwhile, and the quiet substitution of an optimistic revised plan for an account of what actually happened. Each is understandable, each is expensive, and each is far easier to avoid than to explain afterwards.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Record the cause and impact
- Review the immigration calendar
- Update the plan honestly
- The three responses that cause harm
- What the correction costs later
Should a long-term U.S. residence goal determine L-1 or E-2?
L-1 and E-2 are temporary classifications with distinct requirements, not automatic permanent-residence programmes. A long-term goal deserves separate analysis alongside the immediate business plan. Choose the temporary route from supported facts and review future immigration options individually rather than treating founder status, investment or a particular visa label as a guaranteed green card. Choosing between them is a decision with several contributors and only one owner. A corporate lawyer structures the entity, an accountant models the funding, an immigration lawyer assesses which classification the facts can actually support, and the founder decides what the business is going to do. Difficulty arrives when one participant answers a question belonging to another — most often when a structuring decision is taken first and the immigration analysis is asked to accommodate it.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Assess the immediate work honestly
- Keep future eligibility separate
- Plan the business for flexibility
- Who owns which part of the decision
- The question no adviser can answer for you
What family information belongs in an initial planning conversation?
Begin with who may move, each person’s nationality and the work or study questions the household needs answered. A short factual outline is enough to orient the discussion. Do not send passports, relationship records or children’s identifying information through the public enquiry before the purpose and sharing process are clear. Circumstances move between the first conversation and any filing more often than not, so the outline produced at the start should be built to be updated rather than filed away. Agree at the outset which facts you will report back if they change — a birth, a marriage, a separation, a child’s birthday crossing a threshold, a new job for the spouse — and to whom they should go. A plan with no reporting channel goes stale quietly.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Give each person a separate line
- Name the decisions behind the move
- Agree the next information request
- The facts most likely to change
- How to report a change usefully
Can you switch routes after beginning an EB-5 or Gold Card plan?
Changing a strategy does not automatically transfer filings, payments or eligibility to another programme. Before moving from EB-5 to Gold Card or the reverse, identify what has actually been signed, paid or submitted. Obtain advice on existing obligations and the new route rather than assuming earlier work creates a transferable immigration credit. Switching direction fails most often on an assumption about what carries across, which makes it worth stating plainly what does not. Money paid under one route does not become money paid under the other. Work product prepared for one is not automatically usable for the other. A decision to stop pursuing one does not by itself end obligations already created under it. Accurate personal history carries across, and remarkably little else does.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Inventory the commitments already made
- Review the existing case and contracts
- Assess the replacement route afresh
- What the two routes do not share
- The misreading behind most switches