Read the general life across the border overview
Families rarely move as a single status. The principal’s classification decides the principal’s rights; each spouse and each child carries a derivative status with its own limits on work, study and age. Needing the help — a spouse who ran the Canadian office, a nineteen-year-old ready to take shifts — creates no authorization at all. Map every household member separately before anyone accepts a job or resigns from one.
Describe each person’s real activity
Hypothetical example: a Lincoln irrigation-equipment dealer opens a U.S. service depot, the spouse intends to manage purchasing, and a twenty-year-old child expects paid weekend shifts. Record four things for each member of the household: the exact relationship, the date of birth, the derivative status that person will hold, and the specific activity proposed — paid or unpaid, remote or on the premises. Unpaid work for the family business is still work. So is remote work for a Canadian employer performed while the person is physically in the United States, which is a common and expensive misunderstanding. Doing this at the planning stage rather than after arrival is what lets a household see, early, which member needs an independent route of their own.
Read each derivative status on its own terms
TD status carries no employment authorization whatever, including remote work for a foreign employer performed from inside the United States. E and L spouses are treated differently: a qualifying spouse is employment-authorized incident to valid status, evidenced by the admission record, and an EAD is not universally required — though many employers still ask to see one. That authorization belongs to the spouse alone. Children holding TD, E-2 or L-2 status do not acquire it by being dependants, whatever their age or the family’s need. All of these dependants may enrol and study while maintaining status, but studying neither extends the status nor converts it, and when the principal’s classification ends the derivative ends with it. L-1A time is capped at seven years and L-1B at five, and the family’s clock runs on the principal’s.
Keep investor-family questions separate
On the immigrant side the counting changes. EB-5 derivatives — a spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one — are admitted on the principal’s petition; they are not additional investors, and the investor’s own spouse and children are not among the ten full-time positions for qualifying U.S. workers that the investment has to create. A child approaching twenty-one is a scheduling problem rather than a formality: the Child Status Protection Act calculation depends on that individual’s own filing and approval dates and on visa availability, and it does not simply freeze an age at the moment of filing. For a Gold Card request, intended eligible family should be identified at the outset with their separate per-person amounts, because adding a relative later is a new request rather than an amendment to an existing one.
Sequence the immigrant arrivals correctly
Where the family holds immigrant visas, the principal must be admitted to the United States before, or at the same time as, any derivative; a derivative cannot enter first and wait for the principal to follow. Households often plan around a school term or the sale of a house and then discover that the convenient order is not a permitted one. Build the move around that rule and around each person’s own paperwork: separate medical examinations, separate interviews, separate validity periods that can expire on different dates. Where a spouse or an adult child intends to keep working, confirm the authorization attached to their specific status before any resignation letter is sent.
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.