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.
Penhold TN guide: build a truthful file for each proposed engagement
Comparing offers can help clarify a professional plan, but it should not produce a support letter describing work that no employer has actually offered. Keep each genuine arrangement identifiable.
TN requires Canadian or Mexican citizenship, qualifying temporary work in a listed profession and its prescribed qualifications. Experience is a degree alternative only where that profession permits. Identify the genuine duties in the offer under assessment rather than selecting tasks from several different proposals.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Match the actual offer to the profession
- Keep qualifications and entity facts attached to the applicant
- Assess the process for additional work
Penhold citizenship guide: compare routes without borrowing another person’s eligibility
A household or business group can include people with different citizenship and employment histories. Assess the actual proposed applicant rather than assuming everyone has the same U.S. options.
Canadian permanent residence is not Canadian citizenship. TN requires Canadian or Mexican citizenship as well as a listed profession, prescribed qualifications and qualifying temporary work. A colleague’s eligibility or a spouse’s passport does not establish the principal applicant’s citizenship requirement.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify whose citizenship supports the TN proposal
- Keep the alternative route tests separate
- Plan dependents as individual people
Penhold E-2 guide: distinguish available opportunities from committed investment
A list of possible businesses is a planning tool, not evidence that the applicant has invested in all of them. Identify the real enterprise and transaction before calculating qualifying capital.
E-2 has no universal fixed minimum: lawful capital must be substantial in relation to the business and committed at risk. Properly structured visa-contingent escrow may qualify. Identify the actual payment and release conditions instead of adding the prices of mutually exclusive opportunities as though they were completed commitments.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Trace the genuine commitment
- Read this enterprise’s ownership and financing
- Assess the operation the applicant will direct
Penhold L-1 launch guide: show who will perform the operating work
A new operation may require several functions before it has a large team. Explain the transferred employee’s genuine role and the resources supporting it rather than assuming a broad job description proves management.
Less than one year of U.S. doing business defines a new office; incorporation alone does not. Establish a genuine parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate relationship and regular, systematic and continuous business in the United States and at least one other country during the stay. A chart of planned entities cannot replace actual relationships and operations.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Identify the actual new office and qualifying group
- Explain how a management role will be supported
- Assess a specialist assignment on its own basis
Penhold business guide: compare a real transfer with a real investment
The tempting error is to build one case out of the best parts of two: the corporate group from the transfer proposal, the capital from the acquisition, the role from whichever side flatters it. Each route has to stand on facts that genuinely belong together — the same employer, the same employee, the same enterprise, the same money. Compare the arrangements whole, and only then choose between them.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Keep the L-1 employee and corporate facts together
- Keep E-2 funds and directing rights with the enterprise
- Use the actual launch stage in the comparison
Penhold family guide: one household can have several different permission questions
A family may plan to share work, study and business responsibilities in the United States. Identify who will perform each activity and which actual status could permit it rather than relying on the principal’s plan for everyone.
Temporary dependents generally need to be a qualifying spouse or unmarried child under 21. TD gives no employment authorization, including remote work performed in the United States for a foreign employer. A qualifying E or L spouse may work incident to valid status with appropriate evidence; an EAD is not universally required. Children do not receive that spousal benefit.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Allocate the proposed activities to real people
- Do not use a shared timetable as proof of permission
- Separate derivative residence from Gold Card family payments
Penhold investor guide: compare complete proposals rather than selected price lines
Comparing the lowest number on each side produces the wrong answer. One figure is capital placed at risk in a business that has to create jobs and may be lost; the other is a gift that never returns, charged for every person in the household. Put the whole of each proposal beside the whole of the other: principal applicant, family count, rights retained, obligations assumed, and the government stage that still has to follow.
WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS
- Read the EB-5 case as an investment with obligations
- Calculate Gold Card using the real sponsorship and household
- Compare the immigration stages as well as the cash amounts