Read the general life across the border overview
Families gather paperwork in one pile and then discover that immigration does not process piles. Every derivative has their own relationship to prove, their own status to hold, and their own limits on what they may do once admitted. The test for any document is narrow: whose name is on it, which relationship does it evidence, and which person’s case does it belong to. This worksheet applies that test to names, to work, to ages, and to arrival order.
Preserve identity and relationship accurately
Keep names exactly as the issuing authority wrote them, and where a document genuinely disagrees with a passport, whether a maiden name, a changed spelling or a transliteration, evidence the change rather than editing the record. Hypothetical example: a Grimsby household files a long-form birth registration for the wrong sibling, because the two entries look alike and both children are travelling. That is not a clerical detail. It leaves the named child’s relationship unproven and puts a document about someone else into the other child’s file. Build one folder per person, put that person’s passport at the front of it, and check that every record inside either names that person or evidences that person’s relationship to the principal. A shared folder feels complete precisely because nobody has checked whose name is on what.
Assess activities by each person’s status
What each person may do is decided by the status that person holds, not by the household’s plans. A dependant admitted in TD status may live and study in the United States but may not work, and that includes logging in from a U.S. address to a Canadian employer’s systems, because the restriction follows physical presence rather than payroll. The spouse of a qualifying E or L principal is employment-authorized incident to valid status, with the appropriate documentary evidence, and can therefore take a U.S. job outright. Children receive no equivalent benefit in any of these categories, whatever their age or qualifications. A letter from the principal’s employer, or the fact that a sibling has already been admitted and is working, establishes nothing at all about a different person’s permission.
Keep age, study and immigrant family rules distinct
Age is measured against the derivative rules, and it commonly bites in the middle of an academic year. A dependent child in a temporary category must generally be unmarried and under twenty-one, and being enrolled at a U.S. school does not hold that status open past the birthday, because the permission to study comes from the status and ends when the status ends. The protection that can preserve a child’s age in the immigrant categories is calculated case by case and does not reach across to freeze a temporary dependant’s limit. On the Gold Card side, the current official framework expects intended eligible joining family to be named at the outset, each carrying its own stated additional amounts. Approving one family member’s file resolves nothing about the next one.
Respect the order of immigrant entry
Arrival order is a rule, not a preference, once the family is travelling on immigrant visas. The principal beneficiary must be admitted before the derivatives, or together with them; a derivative cannot enter first and be joined later by the person whose status theirs depends on. Households routinely plan the opposite, sending one parent ahead to find housing and a school place while everyone else follows, so raise the sequence early, before flights are booked or a lease is signed. Build the moving plan around each person’s own documents and their own validity dates, and treat the order of entry as fixed by the process rather than chosen by the family.
What else is on your mind?
Is a matching job title enough for TN?Can years of experience replace a degree for TN?Can my own U.S. company employ me under TN?Can my spouse work if I hold TN status?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.