TN
That U.S. opportunity is worth a conversation. Explore professional work through the TN pathway.
A Saint-Ambroise file can turn on one question nobody asks out loud: who owns the business the applicant is about to work in. That single answer opens some routes and closes others, because owning your U.S. employer disqualifies one category, is the whole point of a second, and is beside the point in a third.
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Settle the ownership before settling the paperwork. Write down who holds the shares in the Canadian company, who holds them in the U.S. one, whether those two holdings actually make the companies related, and whether the person who will do the work also appears on the share register. Four routes read that one page four different ways.
Choose what brings you here. Leave with a short list of things to discuss—not another long form to fill out.
Explain the position the applicant will genuinely fill.

A professional entry is for prearranged work performed for somebody else. A Canadian citizen may take up a TN position with a U.S. employer, or deliver prearranged professional services to a U.S. client under a contract held by a Canadian employer, in a profession listed in USMCA Appendix 2 and against that profession's own degree, licence or experience standard. Self-employment in the United States is not permitted on this route, and any interest the applicant holds in the prospective U.S. employer has to be disclosed and will be weighed against that limit.
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Before anyone describes a job, establish who owns each company involved, in what proportion, and since when. A certificate of incorporation, a share register and a shareholders' agreement answer questions that a job description cannot reach, and they answer them in writing, with dates, which is the form any reviewer prefers.
An intracompany transfer rests on a relationship between two employers — parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate — with both of them actively doing business. Common ownership can supply that link: two companies owned and controlled by the same individual, or by the same group of individuals holding approximately the same share of each, are affiliates. A minority stake in two otherwise unconnected companies that happen to trade with each other is not the same thing. Establish which of the two describes your structure, in the corporate records, before the file is built on it.
A professional entry needs an employer who is not you; a treaty investment needs you to direct the enterprise. Which of those describes your plan changes the evidence completely: an offer letter, a credential and a licence in the first case; a committed, traceable investment and a business that already trades in the second.
Shares registered in a spouse's or a child's name confer no permission to work, and status does not pass down a family tree. Set out what each person will genuinely do in the United States, match it to the status that allows that activity, and diarise the birthday on which a child stops being eligible as a derivative.
Investment routes invert the rule and ask you to be the owner. An E-2 enterprise must carry treaty nationality — at least half of it owned by Canadian citizens who are not U.S. permanent residents — with capital irrevocably committed and genuinely at risk, substantial in relation to the cost of the business, and placed in a real, operating, non-marginal enterprise that the investor develops and directs, ordinarily through majority ownership or demonstrable operational control. EB-5 asks instead for qualifying capital of proven lawful source and path, at least ten full-time jobs for qualifying U.S. workers, and an investor engaged in management or policy formulation rather than holding a purely passive stake. The Gold Card buys no ownership of anything: it is a gift to the U.S. government plus a processing fee, never equity, never recoverable, and never an EB-5 investment, and its published terms should be re-verified at the official source before any money moves. Keep official programme charges and their receipts apart from private invoices from agents, advisers or sellers: only an official decision, never a paid invoice, tells you where a case actually stands.
Find your pathwayShneur Herman, Jo Kubti and Alexander Paton advise Saint-Ambroise clients remotely, by video call, telephone and WhatsApp; there is no office here to visit. On ownership questions we ask for the dull documents before the persuasive ones — the share register, the certificate of incorporation, the shareholders' agreement, the register of directors — because those record in writing, with dates, what job titles and organisation charts only describe. This is a consultancy and not a law firm; licensed U.S. attorneys are engaged where legal representation is required.
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Not on that footing. TN is for a Canadian citizen taking up prearranged professional work for another party, in a profession listed in USMCA Appendix 2, satisfying that profession's own degree, licence or experience requirement; self-employment in the United States is not permitted, and a stake in the prospective employer must be disclosed and will be examined against that rule. Hypothetical example: a veterinarian who incorporates a small-animal clinic in Maine and holds every share of it is proposing to work for herself whatever the offer letter says, while the same veterinarian engaged by a clinic she has no interest in, holding the state licence her profession requires, is an ordinary professional case.
Not by itself, and the answer turns on control rather than on holding shares. The L categories test the relationship between the two employers — parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, both actively doing business — together with one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the three years before the petition. Two companies owned and controlled by the same individual, or by the same group of individuals each holding approximately the same share of each, can qualify as affiliates; a minority interest in two commercially unrelated businesses does not by itself create the relationship, and a trading relationship between them is not the test. Where the relationship genuinely exists, an L-1A role must be primarily managerial or executive, and an L-1B role must rest on specialised knowledge of that company's own product, process or procedures rather than on skill any competent practitioner would have.
It does not touch the nationality tests. TN is open to citizens of Canada and Mexico, and E-2 treaty nationality is a citizenship question twice over: for the investor personally and for the ownership of the enterprise itself. A permanent resident card substitutes for neither, and permanent residence and citizenship remain separate facts however long the residence has lasted. Ownership can decide which route fits once nationality is satisfied; until then it decides nothing, and the useful move is to fix the sequence rather than argue the stake.
No. A share certificate is not work authorisation, and each family member's route follows what that person will actually do. Spouses of L-1 and E-2 principals are employment-authorized incident to their status; dependants holding TD status may study but may not work; and an unmarried child's eligibility as a derivative ends at twenty-one. Write each person's intended activity on its own line, match it to the status that permits that activity, and treat the age limit as a planning date rather than a surprise.
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