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Douro-Dummer guide: the assumptions that spoil a TN file

Hypothetical example: a Douro-Dummer physiotherapist accepts a role with a U.S. rehabilitation group and assumes that a recognised degree settles the matter. Appendix 2 accepts a baccalaureate or Licenciatura degree, or a state/provincial licence, for Physiotherapist. The destination state may separately require its own licence before practice. The employer letter must also establish prearranged professional work rather than treating border presentation as a formality.

WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS

• Assuming the degree covers the licence
• Assuming the employer's letter will do
• Assuming a port presentation is routine

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Douro-Dummer guide: when the employer's assumption is wrong

Hypothetical example: a Douro-Dummer welding supervisor who has held Canadian permanent residence for eight years is told by a U.S. fabricator that Canadians simply present at the border. The statement is true of Canadian citizens and untrue of this applicant, and correcting it early prevents a start date being promised on a route that was never available.

Employers who have hired Canadian citizens build expectations around that experience: no petition, no consular appointment, a decision at the border. Those expectations are then applied to anyone living in Canada. Permanent residence establishes lawful status in Canada; it is not nationality, and TN is available to citizens of Canada and Mexico. The correction should be made in the first conversation rather than after a start date has been circulated internally, because the alternative routes carry different lead times and costs, and the employer may need to take a decision it did not expect to face.

WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS

• Where the misunderstanding comes from
• What remains available, and on what facts
• Two immigration systems running at once

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Douro-Dummer guide: when seller financing undermines the investment

Hypothetical example: a Douro-Dummer aggregate haulage owner buys a U.S. ready-mix operation, paying part of the price at closing and the balance over four years secured against the business itself. The structure is ordinary in this industry and it creates a specific problem: funds secured by the enterprise's own assets do not count as the investor's qualifying capital.

The requirement is capital irrevocably committed and genuinely at risk of partial or total loss. Where an investor borrows against personal assets and is personally liable, the investor bears the loss if the enterprise fails, and the funds can generally be treated as their own capital at risk. Where the debt is secured by the assets of the enterprise being acquired, the risk sits with the business rather than the investor, and the borrowed portion does not count. The same purchase price can therefore produce very different qualifying amounts depending only on how the financing was arranged.

WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS

• Why the security determines the answer
• What to do about it before signing
• The tests that still have to be met

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Douro-Dummer guide: the first year that decides the second

Hypothetical example: a Douro-Dummer modular-building manufacturer opens a U.S. plant and transfers the person who will run it. A new-office L-1 approval lasts one year. The characteristic failure is not commercial: the business succeeds, the transferred manager works extremely hard, and the extension is difficult because the year produced a working proprietor rather than a documented manager.

For a new office the petitioner must show that physical premises have been secured, that a qualifying relationship exists between the entities, and that the U.S. entity will support a managerial or executive position within one year of approval — or, for a specialized-knowledge beneficiary, that it can support the work. The beneficiary still needs a continuous qualifying year of employment abroad within the preceding three years. In practice that means a lease, corporate documents, evidence of capitalisation, and a business plan whose staffing and financial projections are specific enough to be tested against reality later.

WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS

• What the initial petition must establish
• How the year goes wrong while going well
• What to set up on day one

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Douro-Dummer guide: choosing the wrong applicant in a two-person business

Hypothetical example: in a Douro-Dummer household one spouse owns the trades company and the other runs its operations day to day. Both L-1 and E-2 appear available, and the discussion usually settles on the owner as the applicant. That instinct is worth examining, because each route asks about a different person's facts.

The L route requires a continuous qualifying year of employment abroad with the organisation within the three years before the petition, a qualifying parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate relationship between two entities that are both doing business, and U.S. duties that are primarily managerial or executive, or that involve specialized knowledge of the company's own products or processes. Ownership is not the test. The operations spouse with a documented managerial role and a clean employment record may be the stronger beneficiary even though the other spouse holds the shares, and that possibility deserves a deliberate look.

WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS

• L-1 looks at the employee's history and the company's structure
• E-2 looks at the investor's nationality, capital and control
• Ask which person's file already exists

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Douro-Dummer guide: the household assumptions that cause the most disruption

Hypothetical example: a Douro-Dummer household plans a move where one spouse holds the offer, the other works as a paramedic and expects to find similar work, and a child intends to start college. Each of those expectations rests on an assumption that may not hold, and all three are cheaper to test now than to discover afterwards.

Whether a spouse may work depends entirely on the category. For a TN principal’s spouse, TD allows residence and study but not employment. L-2 spouses and qualifying E spouses are employment-authorized incident to status. Those are very different household economics and the difference should be settled before a budget is built or a resignation is given. In every one of these categories, dependent children may attend school but do not obtain work permission through a parent's status, and a spouse who wants to work in a category that does not permit it needs their own independent basis.

WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS

• Assuming the spouse can work
• Assuming permission to work means permission to practise
• Assuming a child's plans are unaffected

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Douro-Dummer guide: two things that are not two prices

Hypothetical example: a Douro-Dummer household is presented with EB-5 and the official Gold Card framework side by side as the two money options, distinguished mainly by amount. That framing is the error. The two create different obligations, different risks and different ongoing requirements, and comparing them by price alone conceals everything that matters.

EB-5 capital is invested in a new commercial enterprise, remains the investor's capital, must be genuinely at risk, and is tied to the creation of at least ten full-time positions for qualifying U.S. workers. The source and path of every dollar must be documented. It leads to two years of conditional permanent residence, followed by a petition on Form I-829 ordinarily filed in the ninety days before the second anniversary of conditional admission, proving that the capital stayed invested and the jobs were created. That is a multi-year obligation with ongoing record-keeping, not a single transaction.

WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS

• What EB-5 actually commits the household to
• What the Gold Card framework is described as
• What neither of them buys

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