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.
A diploma, a degree and a listed profession are three different documents
Hypothetical example: Perrine contracts tree planting and stand tending across Algoma cutovers from a base in Laird, running crews from May to freeze-up. An American timberland manager has offered her a silviculture supervisor position. Sylviculturist is a listed profession, which sounds like the end of the enquiry. Her qualification is a three-year forest technology diploma, and the profession's own rule is not satisfied by every credential that sounds forestry-shaped.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The profession's own rule decides, and it is specific
- If the credential is fixed, the document set is short and unforgiving
- Her own company is the second problem, and it is the harder one
Two obstacles, and naturalising would only remove one of them
Hypothetical example: Nnamdi is a Nigerian citizen with Canadian permanent residence, working as a heavy-equipment mechanic for a logging contractor near Laird. His wife is a Canadian citizen who writes service and parts manuals for a forestry-machinery dealer. An American operator has offered him a shop foreman position and told him the crossing is a formality. Two facts sit in his way, and one of them is easy to miss.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The professional admission is built on citizenship, and his is not Canadian
- The second obstacle would apply even to a Canadian citizen
- Which routes ignore nationality, and what the household could actually do
When most of the business is leased, what exactly has been invested?
Hypothetical example: Aurélien hauls logs and moves equipment for contractors out of Laird and wants to open a wood-chip and biomass transfer yard on the American side, serving mills that burn residuals. His plan is efficient and asset-light: leased tractors, a leased yard, a leased loader and a rented scale house. Everything about it is commercially sound, and almost none of it looks like invested capital to someone assessing a treaty investment.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Leases are not the same as capital, though they can support it
- Conditional commitment is the most common self-inflicted wound
- A yard with two employees raises the marginality question early
Premises are the hardest evidence for a business that works out of a truck
Hypothetical example: Bronwen owns a forest inventory and mapping firm in Laird, cruising stands and interpreting aerial and airborne laser data for woodlot owners and mills. She wants to open an American office and transfer herself into it to run it. Her staff work from laptops in motel rooms and pickup cabs, which is why the business has grown without ever needing a building, and which is exactly what makes a new-office petition awkward.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What a first-year approval is actually for
- Sufficient physical premises when nobody sits in an office
- The year-one contradiction, and how to write around it honestly
Ask which route survives the sale of your Canadian company
Hypothetical example: Desmond brokers sawmill residuals from Laird, matching hog fuel, shavings and chip volumes to buyers on both sides of the border. He is deciding whether to expand by transferring himself into a new American subsidiary or by buying an existing American yard as an investor. A competitor has begun circling his Canadian company with an offer, and that possibility, rather than the tax comparison, is what should drive the choice.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- A transfer depends on a relationship that a sale can end
- A treaty investment depends on who owns the American business
- The question to settle before an entity is formed
Two working adults may need two statuses, not one and a dependant
Hypothetical example: the Béchard-Osei household of Laird is planning a move. He is a Canadian citizen and an exploration geologist with an offer from an American minerals company. She manages grazing and reclamation land for a land-management firm and has been approached by an American employer doing similar work. Their son turns twenty-one in fourteen months, and his grandmother, who lives with them, expects to come too. Only one of those four facts is straightforward.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The default arrangement quietly costs the household an income
- Each person is assessed on their own activity, which cuts both ways
- The son's birthday and the grandmother's absence from the scheme
One route asks where the money came from; the other asks that you part with it
Hypothetical example: Rosalie sold her share of a sawmill she co-owned near Laird and is weighing the immigrant investor programme against the Gold Card for herself and her husband. She has been told the two are versions of the same idea at different prices. They are not remotely the same idea, and the clearest way to see the difference is to ask what happens to the money and who has to prove what about it.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The investor programme interrogates the money and puts it to work
- The Gold Card asks for a payment and then a gift that does not come back
- Set side by side, they differ in what can go wrong