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.
A nurse’s TN file is decided by a licence and a certificate, not by the offer letter
Hypothetical example: Annick is a Canadian citizen working shifts as a registered nurse at a long-term-care residence, commuting from Saint-Lucien. A staffing agency has offered her a contract at an American hospital and has told her the paperwork is straightforward because nursing is on the list. It is on the list, and the profession’s own rule sends her to a state licensing board, while separate federal law sends her to a credentialing organization. Neither of those documents is produced by the agency, and neither can be arranged at the border.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The profession’s entry points straight at a state board
- Federal law asks health-care workers for a further certificate
- When an agency sits between the nurse and the hospital
A permanent resident card answers a Canadian question, not an American one
Hypothetical example: Ravi is a crop agronomist advising growers around Saint-Lucien on soil fertility and rotation. He is a Canadian permanent resident and a citizen of India, and he has been told that his card puts him on the same footing as his Canadian-born colleagues for work in the United States. It does not, for two routes, and it makes no difference at all for the others. Knowing which is which turns a vague disappointment into a short list of options worth pursuing.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Only two of the routes ask about nationality
- What the card proves and what it does not
- The order in which the open routes should be examined
Machinery you already own is not automatically capital you have invested
Hypothetical example: Hélène runs a mobile grain-drying and custom-harvest operation from Saint-Lucien and proposes to start a similar business across the border, contributing three machines she already owns rather than cash. Her assumption is that their value is her investment and the file is therefore complete. Equipment can indeed form part of a treaty investment, but only once several separate questions have been answered: what it is worth, who owns it now, whether it has genuinely been committed, and what remains at risk if the venture fails.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Transferring a machine and investing its value are different acts
- Time and effort are not capital
- Substantial against this business, and provable
A founder can build a company for four years and still lack a qualifying year
Hypothetical example: Jean-Philippe founded a sanitary process-piping fabrication shop near Saint-Lucien four years ago, welding stainless lines for dairies and food plants. He now wants to open a first American shop and transfer himself into it. For the first two years he took no salary and invoiced the company through a personal management corporation. That arrangement, chosen for entirely ordinary tax reasons, is the thing most likely to complicate his petition, because the requirement is not about running a company but about being employed by one.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The year is counted backwards, and it has to be employment
- Being the owner and the employee at the same time
- What the first year of a new office is actually for
Choose between a transfer and an investment by asking where you want to be in ten years
Hypothetical example: Corinne owns a precision machining shop near Saint-Lucien that makes replacement parts for agricultural equipment, and she could either open an American subsidiary and transfer herself into it or buy an existing American shop personally. Both are plausible. The comparison people usually make is about speed and paperwork, which is the least durable of the differences. The comparison that lasts is about what each route allows in its eighth year, and about what each one quietly forbids her from doing in the meantime.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Read the two routes backwards from year ten
- What each choice forbids later
- The facts that decide it before preference does
Four people in one household can need four different answers
Hypothetical example: Véronique is being transferred by her Saint-Lucien employer on a specialized-knowledge petition. Her husband Emmanuel is a Canadian permanent resident and a citizen of Cameroon; their daughter is nineteen and their son is twenty-two. The household thinks of itself as one file. It is four, and the answers diverge on three different rules: the category the principal holds, the age of each child, and the fact that a spouse’s permission comes from the marriage rather than from his own passport.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The spouse’s permission comes from the category, not the passport
- Two children, one boundary between them
- What changes if the principal’s category changes
Compare the two by asking what is left if the answer is no
Hypothetical example: Renaud manages woodlots and processes firewood near Saint-Lucien, and a timber sale has left him with liquid funds and a decision. He has been shown an immigrant investment project and, separately, told that the Gold Card is faster. Speed is the wrong axis on which to compare them. The useful comparison is what each one is in substance, what each one leaves him holding if it succeeds, and what he still owns if it does not.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- One is capital at risk; the other is a fee and a gift
- What each one leaves him holding
- Settle this before either