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 graphic designer with a diploma, not a degree: how the experience alternative is proved
A Frontenac Islands graphic designer with a three-year college diploma and eight years of work, currently freelancing for a Kingston agency, is offered an in-house position at a U.S. marketing firm. The Graphic Designer listing accepts a baccalaureate degree, or a post-secondary diploma or certificate together with three years of experience. The diploma route is legitimate, but the experience must be proved with documents, not a portfolio. Canadian citizenship, a temporary intent, disclosure of any ownership interest in the employer and no self-employment in the United States are also required. A first review should decide whether the diploma-and-experience alternative is being used and identify the one record that proves each claimed year. The employer must also be prepared to describe a supervised employee role, not a client relationship repackaged for the application. That decision affects which contracts, invoices, reference letters, and payroll records are worth obtaining before travel is arranged.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Which document decides it: the experience letters
- Freelance history and the self-employment rule
- Assembling the file for the port of entry
A physiotherapist's TN offer and a permanent-resident husband whose nationality has no treaty
A Frontenac Islands physiotherapist who is a Canadian citizen receives an offer from a rehabilitation clinic in New York. Her husband, a carpenter, is a Brazilian citizen holding Canadian permanent residence and expects to apply for citizenship next year. Her TN case stands on her own citizenship and licence. His permanent-resident card gives him no TN eligibility, and Brazil is not an E-2 treaty country, so his options are TD as her spouse, a status of his own if an employer will sponsor one, or waiting for Canadian citizenship.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What a PR card does and does not do
- Why his nationality matters beyond TN
- How to sequence the household
Buying a marina: which borrowed money counts toward the E-2 investment
A Frontenac Islands couple who have kept boats all their lives want to buy a small marina with a fuel dock and winter storage in northern New York. They will fund it with savings, a loan secured on their island home and a loan the seller proposes to secure on the marina itself. E-2 counts only funds that are the investors' own and at risk. Money borrowed against personal assets they keep counts; money borrowed against the marina does not. That distinction shapes both the purchase structure and the substantiality analysis.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Personal collateral counts; enterprise collateral does not
- Making the counted investment substantial
- Real, operating and directed
A boatbuilder's first U.S. yard: the one-year approval and what extension requires
A Kingston-area boatbuilding company employing a Frontenac Islands resident as production manager wants to open a sales and service yard in New York State and send him to run it. Because the U.S. entity has been doing business for less than a year, the L-1A petition is a new-office case: approved for one year at most, on evidence of secured premises, the qualifying relationship, his year abroad and the company's financial ability to support a managerial position. The extension after twelve months is decided on what the yard has actually done.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What must exist before filing
- How to write the one-year plan
- What the extension examines
A sole-owner island contractor: who runs the Canadian company while you are away
A Frontenac Islands contractor who owns all of a dock, shoreline and septic installation company wants to expand into a lakeside market in New York. As sole owner he could form a U.S. subsidiary and transfer himself under L-1A, or invest personally in a U.S. enterprise under E-2. L-1 requires that the Canadian company keep operating while he is in the United States; E-2 requires that his funds be at risk in a business he develops and directs. The question of who runs the island company while he is gone decides more than he expects.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- L-1A for a sole owner
- E-2 for the same person
- What should decide it
An L-1B household from the islands: a potter, a high-school senior and a parent who will visit
A Frontenac Islands technician transferring under L-1B brings a household with three different answers. Her husband, who sells pottery he makes in a studio behind the house, is an L-2 spouse and employment-authorized incident to status. Their daughter, seventeen and in her final year of high school, is an L-2 child who may study but not work and who loses derivative status at 21. Her widowed father, who plans to spend winters with them, is not a derivative at all and enters as a visitor. Each person's activity determines their route.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- The spouse: authorized, including self-employment
- The daughter: study now, plan for 21
- The parent: a visitor with limits
EB-5 or the Gold Card for a marine-services owner whose child turns 21 soon
A Frontenac Islands man in his forties has sold a boat dealership and holds about US$2 million in cash. He wants to move his family, including a daughter who is twenty, to the United States and asks whether EB-5 or the Gold Card gets them there. The categories are different in kind: EB-5 places capital at risk in a job-creating business and leads to conditional permanent residence; the Gold Card is a gift to the U.S. government plus a fee, after which the applicant still proceeds under EB-1 or EB-2. For his household the daughter's age is the deciding clock.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- What each route does for a child of twenty
- Money at risk versus money given
- The category test the Gold Card does not remove