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.
Lincoln TN guide: distinguish customer demand from the professional employment offer
Three parties often appear in one TN file: the business that wants the result, the company that signs the employment agreement, and the professional who performs the work. Only one of them is the employer whose offer TN is measured against. Set out who pays, who supervises and what the professional will actually do, because a purchase order describes a commercial outcome and never substitutes for the prearranged professional engagement the classification requires.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the employer and customer roles
- Match the activity to a listed profession
- Review the actual ownership and permission
Lincoln guide: commercial interest does not change the applicant’s nationality
Demand from a U.S. buyer is a business fact. Citizenship is a legal one, and the routes that carry a nationality condition do not read the first as evidence of the second. A Canadian permanent resident holding a valid PR card is not a Canadian citizen for TN, and is not a treaty national for E-2. Establish which passport the person actually holds, then test the route against its own conditions before anyone commits to a start date.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Record the principal’s actual citizenship
- Test each alternative against its own conditions
- Keep the offer and process distinct
Lincoln E-2 guide: use customer orders as evidence without overstating their effect
Orders prove that a market exists. They do not prove that capital was spent, committed or placed at risk, and the E-2 tests ask about the money rather than the pipeline. Sort the file into what a buyer has actually paid, what has merely been promised, and what the enterprise has already irreversibly laid out. Revenue you expect is an argument about whether the business is marginal; it is never the investment itself.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the actual commitments
- State what the capital test actually asks
- Assess the complete operating capacity
Lincoln L-1 guide: an officer appointment does not replace launch evidence
A board resolution can name someone Vice-President on the day the U.S. entity is incorporated. It cannot show premises, funding, or a structure that person will genuinely manage. A new-office L-1 petition is decided on what the company has actually arranged and on what the transferee will really do during the first year, so the appointment belongs in the file as one document among several rather than as the case itself.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Describe authority and duties in practice
- Separate the L-1A and L-1B launch tests
- Preserve real dates and organizations
Lincoln guide: an appointment and an investment agreement establish different facts
Read the appointment resolution and investment agreement as two different proposals. Identify the duties the company assigns and the rights and funds the investor personally commits before choosing a route.
Hypothetical example: a board grants a title while the person continues delivering services. For L-1A, the actual U.S. work must be primarily managerial or executive; L-1B instead concerns specialized-knowledge duties. Show the qualifying company relationship and continuing international business as well as the individual’s history. Under the ordinary L rule, one continuous full-time year abroad in the relevant preceding three years may be in managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge employment. Brief U.S. trips need not break continuity, but their days do not count toward that year. A board resolution cannot create a completed employment period.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Ask what changed when the officer was appointed
- Read the investor’s rights independently of the appointment
- Keep each proposal’s resources attached to its enterprise
Lincoln family guide: a business role does not automatically establish dependent work permission
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.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Describe each person’s real activity
- Read each derivative status on its own terms
- Keep investor-family questions separate
- Sequence the immigrant arrivals correctly
Lincoln guide: a growth forecast and public guidance are not individual immigration decisions
Two documents commonly sit on the table when a household compares investor routes: a sponsor’s projection of what a project will earn, and a government page describing how a programme works in general. Neither is an adjudication. One is a commercial forecast whose assumptions belong to its author; the other states rules that still have to be applied to a particular person, a particular source of funds and a particular filing date.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Explain the EB-5 investment and job account
- Use Gold Card guidance with actual instructions
- Keep later outcomes conditional
- Set the two frameworks side by side