Employment is permitted: an L-2 spouse is employment-authorized incident to that status, unlike a TD dependant. Continuing to own and operate a Quebec company from a U.S. residence is a separate question of corporate and tax law that immigration status does not answer, and it should go to an accountant.
The spouse may work; the company is a different problem
Hypothetical example: Rosalie transfers to the American subsidiary as a manager. Her husband Emilien owns a small welding and fabrication shop near Wickham and intends to keep invoicing his Quebec customers while living in the United States, and their daughter turns twenty-one in fourteen months. On the immigration side the news is good for Emilien personally: L-2 spouses are employment-authorized incident to that status, so he may take American employment or work for himself there without a separate permit.
What immigration status does not resolve is whether a Quebec corporation directed from a U.S. residence creates a U.S. tax presence for the company, or obligations for its Canadian customers, and those questions belong with an accountant before the move rather than at the first filing deadline.
The daughter's date is the harder constraint. Derivative status for an unmarried child ends at 21, so the family should identify her own route now, whether that is a student status of her own or something else.
- USCIS: L-1A intracompany transferee executive or manager
- USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 2 Part L: intracompany transferees
- USCIS: L classification documentation and evidence
- eCFR: 8 CFR 214.2(l), intracompany transferees
- Department of State: 9 FAM 402.12, intracompany transferees
- USCIS: Form G-1055, fee schedule