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 job is real but the title is wrong, the letter has to do the correcting
Hypothetical example: Ravindra Nair is a meteorologist with a wind-energy services company in Lambton Shores, producing resource assessments and icing forecasts for turbine operators. An American operator wants him for a two-year programme and has written an offer addressed to a wind analyst. Meteorologist is a listed profession in the USMCA Appendix 2 scientist group; wind analyst is not a profession at all. The paperwork has to close that distance honestly, before he stands at a counter with it.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The scientist entries are credential-driven, and the credential is a degree
- The letter is where the profession is claimed, so it has to claim it
- Sequence at the counter, and what should never be improvised there
A permanent resident card answers a Canadian question, not an American one
Hypothetical example: Tomasz Wysocki is a Polish citizen who has held Canadian permanent residence for six years and works as an irrigation technician for a greenhouse operation near Lambton Shores. The American parent of his employer has asked whether he can be moved south, and someone has told him his PR card is as good as a passport for that purpose. It is not, and in his case there is a second obstacle behind the first that would apply even if he naturalised tomorrow.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Two of the routes are reserved for citizens, and one is reserved differently
- The routes that never asked about citizenship at all
- The second obstacle: the occupation itself
Half of what a new business costs is not investment, and the receipts decide which half
Hypothetical example: Marisol Iglesias has run a garden centre near Lambton Shores for nine years and is opening a retail nursery across the border. She has a lease, a glasshouse to re-glaze, an irrigation fit-out to pay for, plant stock to buy, and a folder of quotations. What she does not yet have is a clear idea of which of those numbers an adjudicator will treat as invested capital and which will be politely set aside.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What ordinarily counts toward the investment
- What does not count, whatever it cost her
- Keep the paper as you go, because reconstructing it is worse
A first year granted on a promise, and an extension that audits it
Hypothetical example: Barnaby Ellsworth's blade-inspection company operates from Lambton Shores with drone crews and a small analysis team, and he is establishing an American subsidiary to serve operators in three states. He expects to run it himself for the first two years. Because the U.S. entity will have been doing business for less than a year when the petition is filed, this is a new-office case, and new-office cases are decided on evidence about a business that does not exist yet.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What must already be true when the petition is filed
- The extension is where the plan is compared with the year
- Three things a new office is not
Ask what happens to each route on the day you sell the company
Hypothetical example: Yolande Bissonnette owns a horticultural-supply business in Lambton Shores that sells substrates, containers and irrigation components to growers on both sides of the border. She can either open an American subsidiary and transfer herself into it, or buy an American distributor outright and run that. Most comparisons of L-1 and E-2 start at the entry requirements. Hers is better answered at the other end, because the two categories react very differently to a change of ownership, a partner buying in, and a sale.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- E-2 is held together by the ownership percentage
- L-1 is held together by the corporate relationship and a clock
- The questions to settle before either structure is built
One move, four people, and four different questions to answer
Hypothetical example: the Nakagawa-Beaulieu household in Lambton Shores is considering a move built around one job offer at a Michigan resort group. Kenji would hold the professional status. Aurélie intends to keep her Ontario consulting clients. Their son turns twenty-one in fourteen months. Aurélie's mother, who lives with them, expects to come along. Four people, one plan, and only one of them has a route that has been thought about.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Each person is measured on their own facts
- Derivative status is borrowed, and narrower than families expect
- The people no derivative status reaches
One route asks where your money came from; the other asks you to let it go
Hypothetical example: Solange Duquette owns three lakeshore accommodation properties around Lambton Shores and has decided to pursue permanent status in the United States rather than another season of cross-border commuting. She has been given a page comparing EB-5 with the Gold Card as though they were two prices for the same product. They are not comparable in that way at all, and the clearest way to see why is to ask what happens to the money in each.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- EB-5: the money is invested, examined, and left exposed
- The Gold Card: a fee to be considered, then a gift that does not return
- The questions that actually separate them