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.
Which documents decide a medical laboratory technologist's TN application
Hypothetical example: Jasmin is a Canadian citizen working as a medical laboratory technologist at a hospital laboratory that serves Essa, and a U.S. hospital has offered her a bench position. Medical Technologist is a USMCA Appendix 2 profession with its own rule — a baccalaureate degree, or a post-secondary diploma or certificate plus three years of experience — and the rest of her application consists of showing which branch she satisfies and proving the job is professional laboratory work. This guide sorts her documents by what each one proves and identifies the two that decide the outcome.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Decide which branch of the profession's rule you are relying on
- The two decisive papers: the experience letters and the employer's support letter
- Supporting papers, and the licensing question that TN does not answer
A heavy-equipment mechanic with Canadian permanent residence and no TN route
Hypothetical example: Rowena came to Canada from the Philippines, holds Canadian permanent residence, and works as a heavy-equipment mechanic for an aggregate and excavation contractor in Essa. A U.S. equipment dealer would like to hire her. She assumes that living and working lawfully in Canada gives her the same U.S. options as a Canadian citizen. It does not: TN is available only to citizens of Canada or Mexico, and her Philippine citizenship is what the rule tests. This guide explains what her PR card does and does not do at the U.S. border and which routes remain realistic for a tradesperson in her position.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- TN tests citizenship, and a PR card is not citizenship
- The routes that do not care about citizenship: L-1 and employer petitions
- Citizenship changes the picture, and the timeline should be planned honestly
Sequencing an E-2 investment in a U.S. farm-equipment repair shop
Hypothetical example: Gerry and Lise have run a farm-equipment repair and parts business in Essa for twenty years and want to open a similar shop in a U.S. farming county. They are not buying an existing business; they will lease a building, buy tools and inventory, and hire two technicians. Their question is not whether the concept fits E-2 — an operating repair shop with employees plainly can — but in what order to spend money so that the investment is committed enough to qualify without being lost if the visa is refused. This guide sets out a sequence for a start-up E-2 enterprise and the evidence each step produces.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Form the entity, open the account, sign the lease with an exit
- Buy what the business needs, and make the spending irrevocable
- Hire, project, and apply with a plan that answers marginality
What goes wrong in the first year of a new-office L-1A for a fabrication company
Hypothetical example: Tomasz owns a structural-steel and custom-fabrication company in Essa and plans to open a U.S. sales and installation office to serve customers he already ships to. He will transfer himself under L-1A as the office's general manager. Because the U.S. entity will have been operating for less than a year, the petition is a new-office case: approved for one year only, with evidence of premises and of the parent's ability to support the office, followed by an extension in which USCIS asks whether the office has grown into something that needs a manager. This guide looks at where new-office cases most often stumble in that first year.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The initial petition needs a lease, a plan and proof the parent can pay
- The first-year trap: the manager who spends the year doing the work
- Keep both companies alive and keep the paper current
What to ask your accountant before choosing L-1A or E-2 for an HVAC contractor
Hypothetical example: Pavel owns a heating, ventilation and refrigeration contracting company in Essa that installs and services systems for agri-food plants and commercial buildings. He wants to establish a U.S. presence and is unsure whether to have the Canadian company open a U.S. subsidiary and transfer himself as its manager under L-1A, or to invest personally in a U.S. company he controls under E-2. The two routes look at different facts, and most of those facts sit in his accountant's files: who owns what, how long he has drawn a salary, and where the money for a U.S. venture would come from. This guide lists the questions to put to the accountant before an immigration adviser is asked to choose.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Questions that decide whether L-1A is even available
- Questions that decide whether E-2 is realistic
- Reading the answers together
One household, three sets of facts: a systems analyst, a permanent-resident spouse and a nineteen-year-old
Hypothetical example: Chidi is a Canadian citizen employed as a computer systems analyst by a software contractor in Essa and has a TN offer from a U.S. firm. His wife Amara is a Canadian permanent resident and a Nigerian citizen who works as a bookkeeper. Their daughter Ngozi is nineteen and finishing college in Ontario. The family plans to move together, and each of them is tested separately: Chidi on his profession and citizenship, Amara on her own citizenship and what TD allows, and Ngozi on her age and her own plans. This guide walks through what each person's facts mean and why the family should not assume that Chidi's approval settles everything.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Chidi: the principal, and the only one whose Canadian citizenship is tested
- Amara: TD is available to her, but it bars work regardless of her own skills
- Ngozi: nineteen now, and twenty-one before Chidi's first TN period ends
A poultry-farm family comparing recoverable EB-5 capital with a Gold Card gift
Hypothetical example: Helena and her brother Stefan own a poultry operation in Essa that their parents built, and a planned sale of the business to a larger producer will leave each of them with significant liquid capital. Helena wants permanent residence in the United States for her own family and is weighing an EB-5 investment against the Gold Card. Stefan is staying in Canada. The comparison is not between two prices; it is between capital placed at risk in a job-creating enterprise that may be returned, and a gift to the U.S. government that will not be. This guide sets the two side by side on the facts that actually differ and flags what must be verified before either is chosen.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What EB-5 requires and what it gives back
- What the Gold Card is, according to the official framework, and what it does not do
- Putting the facts that differ side by side