Read the general eligibility basics overview
Hypothetical example: Ana Lúcia is a Brazilian citizen and a Canadian permanent resident living in Richmond County, where she works as a social worker for a francophone community services agency. An American nonprofit has approached her about a comparable role. Social Worker appears in the USMCA professions list, so she assumes the route is open. It is not, and the reason has nothing to do with her qualifications: the category is built on citizenship, and her card records residence instead.
Why the listed profession does not help her
The USMCA professional category is available to citizens of Canada and of Mexico. Permanent residence in Canada, however long held and however secure, is not citizenship and does not substitute for it, so Ana Lúcia cannot use the route regardless of the fact that Social Worker is listed and that she holds a baccalaureate in the field. Two further points follow. Her Canadian permanent resident card is not a travel document for United States purposes, and her Brazilian passport governs whether she needs a visitor visa at all. If she naturalises as a Canadian citizen in due course, the professional route becomes available on that day and not before.
Where nationality follows her passport rather than her address
The treaty investor category is the sharpest example. Its nationality requirement attaches to the citizenship of the investor and, through ownership, to the enterprise, and it is satisfied only where that citizenship belongs to a country with the relevant treaty in force. Brazil is not among the treaty countries listed by the Department of State, and living in Canada does not lend her Canadian nationality for this purpose, so the route is closed to her on her own passport. The list is maintained officially and should be checked at the time rather than remembered, and a spouse's different citizenship can sometimes change the analysis where the ownership is genuinely theirs.
The routes that never asked about citizenship
Several categories are indifferent to nationality and depend on other facts entirely. An intracompany transfer turns on a qualifying corporate relationship, one continuous qualifying year abroad within the preceding three, and managerial, executive or specialised-knowledge duties; if her agency has no American entity, that is a fact about her employer rather than about her. The immigrant investor route imposes no nationality condition at all, though it imposes capital, job creation and source-of-funds requirements that are demanding in their own right. Employer-sponsored immigrant categories are similarly open on nationality. The practical step is to test each of those against her actual employer and qualifications, rather than against the one route her profession suggested.
What else is on your mind?
Does Canadian permanent residence give me access to TN?Is a matching job title enough for TN?Can years of experience replace a degree for TN?Can my own U.S. company employ me under TN?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.