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 credential is a DEC and every document is in French
Hypothetical example: Aurore performs biomedical analyses in a hospital laboratory and lives in Wickham, and an American hospital network has offered her a place on its night bench. Medical Laboratory Technologist appears in USMCA Appendix 2, and its own qualification rule is met by a baccalaureate degree or by a post-secondary diploma or certificate together with three years of experience. She holds a diploma of college studies in biomedical laboratory technology rather than a degree, and her diploma, transcripts and employer letters are all in French. Her file therefore turns on two things: proving the experience branch and translating it properly.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Proving the experience branch takes more paper than proving a degree
- Translation is a requirement, not a courtesy
- Naming the profession and the job in the same words
Two of these routes ask where you are a citizen, and two do not
Hypothetical example: Mariana is a citizen of Brazil and a Canadian permanent resident, working as a computer systems analyst for a packaging manufacturer near Wickham. A colleague has told her that her permanent resident card makes her Canadian for immigration purposes at the border. It does not. Permanent residence is not citizenship, and the distinction decides which routes are open to her: TN and the treaty-investor category both test nationality directly, while the intracompany transfer and the immigrant-investor routes do not.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Where nationality is the first question asked
- Where nationality is not asked at all
- What changes on the day citizenship is granted, and what does not
Deferred payments and supplier credit are not always your capital
Hypothetical example: Gaelle is buying an American thermoforming shop. Most of the price is to be paid to the retiring seller in instalments over four years, and a materials supplier has offered a credit line she plans to count toward her investment. Both arrangements are ordinary commerce and neither is improper, but the treaty-investor requirement asks a narrower question: which of this money is hers, irrevocably committed to the enterprise and genuinely at risk today.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Unpaid instalments are not yet invested
- Supplier credit is the supplier's money
- Building the number the file can actually defend
A new-office approval is a one-year test, decided a year later
Hypothetical example: Edouard owns a millwork shop near Wickham and wants to open his first American location in leased industrial space. He is considering transferring himself to run it. A new-office petition of this kind is approved for an initial period of one year, and the extension at the end of that year is decided on what the business actually did, not on what the original plan predicted. Understanding that changes how the first twelve months are spent.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What the initial petition has to show
- The year is evidence-gathering, not a grace period
- Two constraints to build into the plan from day one
Choose between a transfer and an investment by asking how it ends
Hypothetical example: Ariane is the sole shareholder of a technical-textiles converter near Wickham. She could transfer herself into a new American subsidiary as a manager, or invest personally and apply as a treaty investor. Both are available on her facts, and most comparisons stop at speed and paperwork. The more useful question is what happens in five years if she sells the American operation, merges it, or brings in an American partner, because the two categories react to those events very differently.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- A transfer depends on a relationship that a sale can dissolve
- An investment depends on control that a partner can dilute
- Write the exit down before choosing the entry
One move, four people, and four separate answers
Hypothetical example: Joachim would move to the United States as a treaty investor. His wife Lucie is a Canadian citizen who wants to work for an American employer, their son is sixteen, and Lucie's mother, who lives with them, expects to come too. The household thinks of this as one application. It is four assessments, and only two of the four people are covered by Joachim's status at all.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The spouse and the child are derivatives; the parent is not
- Ages are dates, and dates should be in the plan
- Each person's own activity decides their route
One route asks you to prove a business, the other asks you to pass vetting
Hypothetical example: Armand owns a plastics-moulding business near Wickham, has one substantial sum available, and wants to know which immigrant route to examine. Comparing the two by total cost tells him almost nothing. What separates them is what each one requires him to prove: the immigrant-investor route asks for a documented business case sustained over years, while the Gold Card asks him to satisfy vetting under an existing classification and to make a payment.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What the investor route asks him to prove
- What the Gold Card asks him to prove
- The comparison that is actually useful