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.
Choosing the right Appendix 2 entry when your job title does not appear on the list
Most TN problems are classification problems wearing a paperwork costume. Before assembling anything, decide which named USMCA occupation the work actually is, then read that entry’s own qualification rule and collect only what it asks for. A file organised in that order produces three clean groups of documents: proof of citizenship, proof that the specific entry’s requirement is met, and a description of duties that matches the entry rather than the employer’s internal job architecture.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Name the occupation before you name the documents
- Read the qualification branch that actually applies to you
- Keep citizenship and duties in their own lanes
Which U.S. routes ask about your citizenship, and which never mention it
Canadian permanent residence closes one specific door and leaves the rest open, but people who hold a PR card are frequently told the opposite by employers who mean well. Exactly two of the routes discussed on this site contain a nationality test, and they test different things. Sorting out which is which usually takes ten minutes and saves a wasted trip to a border crossing or a wasted retainer.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The one route that is closed
- The route that tests nationality differently
- The routes that never ask
When seller financing quietly removes the risk your E-2 needs you to carry
Buyers negotiate seller financing because it lowers the cash required at closing, and that is usually good business. It can also hollow out the treaty investor case, because capital qualifies only when it has been irrevocably committed and placed genuinely at risk. A note secured by nothing except the assets of the business being bought puts the risk on the seller rather than on the buyer, and the amount financed that way generally cannot be counted.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Where the risk actually sits
- How to restructure without abandoning the deal
- The documents that prove the change
The new-office extension: what year one has to have produced
A new-office L petition is approved for one year, and most owners treat that year as runway. It is better understood as an evidence-gathering period with a fixed deadline, because the extension asks a harder question than the original filing did: not whether the plan was credible, but whether the office has in fact become the kind of operation in which the transferee’s duties are primarily managerial or executive rather than hands-on.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The initial filing sets the standard you will be measured against
- What the extension actually examines
- Managing the year so the evidence exists
A fifty-fifty joint venture can satisfy one route and destroy the other
Owners usually choose between a company transfer and a treaty investment by comparing durations and costs. The more consequential difference is structural: the L classifications need a specific corporate relationship between two companies, while E-2 needs a specific ownership percentage held by treaty nationals. A shareholding arrangement negotiated for ordinary commercial reasons can comfortably satisfy one of those and leave the other impossible, and by then the deal is done.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What each route demands of the ownership chart
- The structure that fails both tests at once
- The questions to settle before signing
Four people, four assessments: a household moving on an immigrant investor petition
Families tend to think of an immigrant petition as one application with passengers. It is better described as one principal and several individual assessments that happen to travel together, each with its own eligibility question and its own dates. Setting them out side by side before filing usually reveals one person whose position is different from everyone else’s, and that person is the one whose planning cannot wait.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The principal, and what conditional residence means
- The spouse and the child who fits
- The child who does not fit, and what to do about it
What each route still requires of you after you arrive
Comparisons between the immigrant investor programme and the Gold Card framework almost always stop at the price. The more useful comparison is what each one continues to demand once the money is gone: how long the capital must stay where it is, how involved you personally have to be, and how much of your existing Canadian life you can realistically keep running while it happens.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The investor route keeps asking for years
- The Gold Card framework ends differently
- Deciding on obligations rather than on price