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 document proves three years of experience for a Val-des-Monts graphic designer’s TN?
Hypothetical example: a Val-des-Monts graphic designer with a three-year college diploma in graphic design has been offered a staff position by a U.S. packaging-design studio. The Graphic Designer entry on the USMCA list accepts a baccalaureate degree, or a post-secondary diploma or certificate together with three years of experience. Because she has a diploma rather than a degree, the experience letters are the documents that decide the case, and the officer will read them for dates, duties and who signed them.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Two routes to the same credential
- What an experience letter must say
- Assemble the file in the order the officer reads it
A Val-des-Monts couple with Canadian permanent residence but not citizenship: which U.S. routes remain?
Hypothetical example: a Val-des-Monts couple who run a cottage-cleaning and property-management company are both permanent residents of Canada and both citizens of a country that has no treaty with the United States. TN is closed to them because it requires Canadian or Mexican citizenship, and E-2 is closed because neither they nor their company carry treaty nationality. What remains open is L-1, which asks about corporate relationship and the year abroad and never about nationality, and, in time, Canadian citizenship itself.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What a permanent-resident card does and does not prove
- L-1 through their own company
- Citizenship changes the map, on its own timetable
Counting the E-2 investment for a Val-des-Monts couple’s U.S. lakeside restaurant
Hypothetical example: a Val-des-Monts couple who are both Canadian citizens and have operated a seasonal lakeside restaurant and rental cabins for eight years plan to lease a U.S. waterfront building and open a restaurant with a boat-rental counter. They will spend on leasehold improvements, kitchen equipment, a rental fleet, opening inventory and a deposit on a house nearby. The E-2 question is which of those outlays count toward the investment, because the consular officer measures substantiality against the money genuinely placed at risk in the enterprise, and a personal residence is never part of it.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Outlays that count and outlays that do not
- Substantial relative to this restaurant, not to restaurants in general
- Marginality, seasonality and who directs the business
Premises, not a mailbox: a Val-des-Monts cybersecurity firm’s first U.S. office under L-1A
Hypothetical example: a Val-des-Monts managed-cybersecurity company that serves rural municipalities and clinics wants to send its co-founder and general manager to open a first U.S. office. Its staff already work remotely, so the founders assumed a virtual-office address would do. A new-office L-1A petition requires evidence that sufficient physical premises have been secured, a one-year approval, and proof by the extension stage that the office supports a managerial role. The lease, the staffing plan and the financial capacity to fund them are the documents that decide it.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What a new-office petition must show at filing
- Build the plan around the year
- Corporate structure and the extension file
Owner of a Val-des-Monts cottage-management company: L-1A or E-2, and what goes wrong with each
Hypothetical example: the sole owner of a Val-des-Monts company that manages, cleans and rents out lakefront cottages for absentee owners wants to run a similar business in a U.S. lake region. Depending on the facts, L-1A may be available through a subsidiary of her Canadian company and E-2 may be available through a U.S. company she owns personally because she is a Canadian citizen; citizenship alone does not establish either classification. The central planning risks are choosing E-2 and later expecting it to provide a direct path to permanent residence, or choosing L-1A and then winding down the active Canadian company on which the qualifying relationship depends.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The L-1A path and how it fails
- The E-2 path and how it fails
- Decide on the exit before choosing the entry
A blended Val-des-Monts family on an EB-5 petition: stepchildren, ages and each person’s own file
Hypothetical example: a Val-des-Monts owner of a well-drilling and water-treatment company is the EB-5 investor. His wife has a daughter from an earlier marriage who was 16 when they married and is now 19, and together they have a son of 6. The petition covers a spouse and unmarried children under 21, and a stepchild qualifies as a child only if the marriage creating the relationship occurred before the child turned 18. The dates on the marriage and birth certificates, not the family’s own sense of itself, decide who is a derivative.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Who counts as a child on the petition
- The daughter’s age and the Child Status Protection Act
- Each person’s activity after residence, and the two-year condition
A widowed Val-des-Monts contractor with adult children: EB-5 investment or Gold Card gift?
Hypothetical example: a 64-year-old Val-des-Monts widower has sold his general-contracting company for the equivalent of US$2,000,000 after tax. His two children are 27 and 30 and settled in Canada. Because neither EB-5 nor the Gold Card can include adult children, the comparison for him is unusually clean: it is about whether the money is placed at risk with a possible return or given away outright, how long each route takes, and what obligations permanent residence imposes on a man who wants to winter in the United States and summer at home.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Capital at risk versus a gift with no return
- Documentation and time
- What permanent residence asks of him afterward