Read the general life across the border overview
Central Saanich families may receive support through a company while each person’s status, work permission and financial obligations remain distinct. The decision is whether the executive should move under an L-1A petition, with an L-2 spouse working incident to status, or accept the company’s offer of a corporately funded Gold Card, where each included spouse or child carries its own stated amount. The spouse’s shareholding in the Canadian company is her own and changes neither answer.
Use actual employment authorization
TD does not permit work. Qualifying E and L spouses may work incident to appropriate status with required evidence; children do not receive the spouse permission. An unpaid staffing plan or corporate benefit cannot replace it.
Assess the immigrant family
Review the actual qualifying relationships and case-specific age and CSPA issues. Immigrant-visa derivatives enter with or after the principal. Inclusion in a case does not erase a spouse’s ownership rights in a source company or establish every applicant’s admissibility.
Clarify the benefit and charges
Corporate Gold Card cases still add US$1 million and US$15,000 nonrefundable processing for each eligible included spouse or child. Confirm the employer’s private coverage and repayment terms separately from official programme requirements and case outcomes. Eligible children generally must be unmarried and under 21; assess any applicable CSPA protection on the individual case facts.
Hypothetical example: a company-paid move, a shareholder spouse and two children
Hypothetical example: a Central Saanich food-processing company that makes frozen fruit products for retailers wants its operations executive to lead a new US plant. The company offers to fund the whole family’s move and mentions it could instead pay for a Gold Card under the current corporate framework. The executive’s wife owns twelve percent of the Canadian company and wants to keep working in the United States. Their children are nineteen and fifteen. Under L-1A, the executive must have a continuous qualifying year with the Canadian company within the last three years and the new plant must show premises and capacity to support his role within one year; his wife would be employment-authorized incident to L-2 status, in any occupation, and her shares stay hers. Both children could accompany as L-2 dependants and study, but neither may work, and the elder loses that status at twenty-one. Under the corporate Gold Card framework, the company’s gift to the U.S. government covers the executive, and each included spouse or child adds the program’s stated per-person gift and nonrefundable processing fee; that is a gift, not an investment, and it is not a conventional visa category, so the terms must be re-verified before money moves.
Records that settle each person’s route
The executive’s route is settled by the Canadian payroll record, the ownership documents linking the two companies and the funded US plant. The wife’s work permission is settled by admission in L-2 status, not by the company’s benefit letter or her shareholding. The children’s eligibility is settled by their birth certificates, unmarried status and being under twenty-one when they seek admission or derivative status; the principal’s petition filing date does not freeze their ages. The corporate Gold Card cost is settled by the official program’s current schedule, read on the day of decision, and the employer’s private repayment terms are a separate contract that binds the family, not the government. Keep the benefit letter, the petition and the gift receipt as three distinct records.
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.