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.
The folder you carry to the counter is the whole application
Hypothetical example: Nkechi is a Canadian citizen and a licensed land surveyor in Victoria County, retained by an American firm that needs boundary and topographic work on a series of coastal properties. She will present herself at a preclearance facility with no visa and no prior approval, which means everything an officer ever sees about her case has to be inside the folder she is carrying. Assembling that folder is the application, and a large share of the refusals in this category are folder problems rather than eligibility problems.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What each document in the folder is there to answer
- Two licences that sound like a single question
- Originals, translations, and the price of one bad crossing
The card in your wallet is a Canadian document, and the border is not reading Canadian documents
Hypothetical example: Éloi is a French citizen holding Canadian permanent residence, working as a stonemason for a heritage restoration company in Victoria County. An American contractor wants him on a courthouse rehabilitation. He has lived and paid taxes in Nova Scotia for eleven years and assumes he stands where his Canadian-born colleagues stand at a border. He does not, and underneath that mistake sits a second obstacle that would apply even if the first one vanished.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What the card is, and what it is not
- The second obstacle: stonemasonry is not in the schedule
- Routes that never asked about citizenship, and what naturalization would change
Substantial is a ratio, and building from nothing changes what has actually been committed
Hypothetical example: Perpetua distils gin and cask-aged spirits in Victoria County and intends to build a small distillery and tasting room in an American town rather than buy an existing one. She has capital, a signed lease and quotations for a still, tanks and a bottling line. What she does not yet have is a clear account of how much of that capital is committed, and because substantiality is a ratio rather than a threshold, the denominator has to be established before the numerator means anything.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- There is no minimum, which is exactly why the denominator matters
- In a build, committed is not the same as available
- Marginality, direction, and the place this route stops
A new office is approved for one year, and the extension grades that year
Hypothetical example: Ravindra runs an architecture practice in Victoria County specializing in the rehabilitation of older buildings, and he is opening a studio in a New England city where the same work is wanted. He will transfer himself to lead it. Because the American entity will have been operating for under a year, this is a new-office petition, approved initially for one year, and what happens during that year is assessed rather than assumed when an extension is sought.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Premises secured means a signed lease, not a shortlist
- Move the money, and keep the paper the movement generates
- Registration and licensing are questions immigration does not answer
The two routes fail for opposite reasons, so test yours against the failure
Hypothetical example: Ottilie owns a land-use and urban planning consultancy in Victoria County, advising municipalities and developers on subdivision layout and heritage districts. She wants an American presence and cannot decide whether to incorporate a subsidiary and transfer herself, or to invest personally in a company she would own and run. Comparing the two on their requirements produces a long and unhelpful table. Comparing them on how each one usually fails is quicker and considerably more revealing.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- How a transfer case usually comes apart
- How an investment case usually comes apart
- Reading both failure modes against her own facts
One household, three separate applications hiding inside it
Hypothetical example: the Lachance-Okonkwo household is moving because one spouse, an accountant, has a TN offer from an American firm. The other spouse is a graphic designer who intends to keep working. Their nineteen-year-old is starting a degree and their twelve-year-old will change schools. The assumption that the principal's admission carries everybody else is where households of this shape come unstuck, because two of these four people need something of their own.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What the dependent status permits, and what it forbids
- The designer's own route is a separate application, not an upgrade
- One child inside the household, one already outside it
One route puts an enterprise on trial, the other puts you on trial
Hypothetical example: Wilhelmina owns a group of restored guest properties in Victoria County and is weighing the immigrant investor route against the Gold Card for her family's move. Both involve very large sums, which makes them look like two versions of a single decision. They are not. The two put entirely different things on trial, and working out which thing is being examined is the quickest way to tell which route a particular person can realistically reach.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The investor route examines a business
- The Gold Card examines the applicant
- What each one leaves recoverable, and who should confirm it