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.
When the qualification is a licence rather than a degree, the licence is the whole file
Hypothetical example: Severine is a land surveyor in Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham, retracing lot lines and preparing certificates of location for farm transactions. An American firm wants her for boundary work in a neighbouring state. Land Surveyor appears in Appendix 2 of the USMCA, and the entry it carries is satisfied by a baccalaureate degree, or alternatively by a state, provincial or federal licence. Her file therefore rises or falls on documents about licensure, and hers are all in French.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Read the entry before assembling anything
- The letter has to name the occupation and describe the work
- French documents need complete certified translations
Permanent residence is not citizenship, and one route notices the difference
Hypothetical example: Bogdan is a Romanian citizen who has held Canadian permanent residence for four years and writes control software for an agricultural technology company near Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham. An American customer has offered him a role and told him that as a Canadian he can simply present himself at the border. He is not a Canadian for that purpose. The professional route under the USMCA is open to citizens of Canada and Mexico, and a permanent resident card proves status in Canada rather than nationality.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What a permanent resident card actually establishes
- Which routes never asked about his passport
- Sequencing a naturalization that has not happened yet
Where a Canadian investor actually applies, and why it is not the border
Hypothetical example: Ophelie builds and repairs harvesting equipment for cranberry growers near Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham and is buying an established nursery and garden centre across the border. She assumes she will do what her employees do when they attend an American trade show, which is present herself at the crossing with her papers. Treaty investor status does not work that way, and understanding the two available routes changes the order in which her purchase, her application and her move have to be arranged.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Two routes, and neither runs through a port of entry
- What the post is reading while it reviews the enterprise
- Marginality is answered over years, not on the day
A new office is approved for a year, so build the file for the second year first
Hypothetical example: Damien bottles maple syrup under private label for retailers from a plant near Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham and is opening a packing site in the United States to serve customers there directly. He intends to run it himself for the first while. Because the American company will have been doing business for less than a year, the petition is treated as a new office and, if approved, is approved for one year. Everything about the plan should be arranged around what will be provable twelve months later.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Premises secured, not premises identified
- The business plan is judged on whether it supports the role
- The extension is decided on what happened, not on what was planned
Two routes for one owner, and the difference shows up at the end rather than the start
Hypothetical example: Karine is the sole shareholder of a company near Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham that mills wood shavings into animal bedding for farms and stables. She wants an American operation and has been told she could either transfer herself into a new American subsidiary or invest as a treaty investor. Both may be available on her facts. They differ most in what happens after the first few years, which is the part of the comparison that is usually left until it is too late to act on.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Sole ownership helps one route and complicates the other
- The clocks run differently
- Questions to put to a United States lawyer and accountant together
Three people, three different permissions, and only one of them comes with the job
Hypothetical example: the Provencher-Lamontagne household is moving because one of them is transferring to an American affiliate as a specialized-knowledge employee. His wife wants to keep her Quebec employer and work for it from the United States. Their elder child is nineteen and part-way through college; the younger is fourteen and will simply enrol in school. The transfer answers the first person's question and none of the others, and the three answers are not found in the same place.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The spouse's authorization is real, and it is broader than people expect
- The nineteen-year-old has a deadline the others do not
- Every household needs the same table drawn once
One asks you to prove things about a business, the other about yourself
Hypothetical example: Yolande harvests and blends horticultural peat and growing media near Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham and has capital from a long-running business she is winding down. Her accountant has asked a blunt question: what does each of these two routes actually require her to demonstrate, and what happens to the money in each case. Setting the marketing aside, the two demand almost opposite kinds of proof, and only one of them leaves anything that can be recovered.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The investor route is an evidentiary project about a business
- The Gold Card framework is a vetting exercise about a person
- What each one leaves behind if it goes wrong