Recently my wife got an awesome opportunity to work in the States (we are both Canadian). Currently, she has a 1 yr temp work visa but she is impressing them on this one project and may be offering her an extended contract at another position (pretty sure her current visa is job specific and will require a new one for this other 3-4 yr position). Her company’s lawyers did all the work getting the visa. She has been down for 1 month, scheduled to stay 2 more. She is getting pretty sad about our distance and taking the more permanent position will hinge on whether I’ll be able to eventually join her.
So my question: What will be our options?
Will her company likely go for some short term job specific greencard or just another work visa?
We are common law. Would getting legally married help?
My profession is not on the NAFTA list
I see there’s a 6 month visitor’s visa. Is that the longest?
Is it likely I would I ever be able to work there within a 3-4 yr time frame?
I am having trouble slogging through the official websites as most info doesn’t deal with the spouse of someone on a work visa. Any links to further reading would be great
What type of visa does your wife have? The answer to your questions will partially depend on that. AFAIK, you need to be legally married to apply for a spouse visa. Eva Luna**** may be able to help with this; I believe she specializes in immigration law.
In the other direction, my son had no trouble getting a visa and a health card for his wife when they spent a year in Montreal. He is a dual citizen. I am guessing it would help to be formally married.
If you are formally married, you will qualify as a dependent on her work visa. If you tell me more about what kind of work visa it is, I can tell you whether being a dependent on her work visa will give you the ability to obtain your own employment authorization without needing your own independent work visa.
If you are common-law married and can document it (via joint leases/property ownership, shared finances, kids in common, etc.), you should be able to get a B-2 (visitor) visa to accompany her, but you will have to keep extending it and won’t be able to work legally unless you get your own work visa. It’s been a while since I’ve had a case like that, but IIRC you can extend your visitor status in either 6-month or 1-year increments.
If you want to join her in the U.S. and can’t find an employer to sponsor you for a work visa, your life will be much easier if you get formally married. I used to do tons of work visas for a U.S. multinational with large operations in Germany and the Netherlands - my boss used to joke that he’s been the precipitating cause for hundreds of Dutch marriages (many of them for people who had lived together for decades and had multiple kids together). I don’t judge people’s life choices, and to me you’re a family if you behave like one, but U.S. immigration policy is all about the piece of paper
I’ll try to check back on this thread, but this week has been nuts at work and I am trying to clear my desk before leaving on vacation Friday. I bet whoever is going to do your wife’s visa would be glad to answer all your questions, whether it’s someone in-house or outside counsel.
Eva Luna, U.S. Immigration Paralegal
P.S. The more I think about it, the more I think you should talk to whoever is doing your wife’s visa. If you are willing to get legally married, and your wife’s qualifications and position lend themselves to more than one visa type, they may decide to do the visa that would allow for independent work authorization for you (L-1 intracompany transferee or E-2, for example) rather than one that wouldn’t provide for that (TN, or H-1B, though the H-1B cap has been exhausted until FY2015 anyway).
P.S. There is no such thing as a “short-term green card.” Green cards involve the intent to live indefinitely in the U.S. If her company is filing a green card application for her, and you want to be included, you have to be legally married. And if you’re not legally married and you are in the U.S. as a B-2 visitor when her green card is approved, you would lose that means to remain legally in the U.S.
In short, you should sort out long-term visa/green card strategy with whomever is figuring out the strategy for your wife.
Well right now it’s a L-intra company transferee visa. Not sure if they would stay with that for the new more permanent position. Hunting around it seems I would have to apply for the same visa type. Does that sound right to anyone?
And thanks for moving the thread, Colibri. I realized later it was more IMHO.
Thanks for all that info Eva. I guess it’s wedding bells for me. lol.
Especially thanks for that first “p.s”. Her current visa is done and the lawyers were slow communicating but if they have options to make this easier on us it’s nice to have the right questions.
No, you would get an L-2, which is the dependent category for an L-1 (but yes, you do have to get legally married first). The good news is that you can apply for independent work authorization as soon as you arrive in the U.S. in L-2 status, and within a couple of months, you will be able to work anywhere you want without employer sponsorship. I bet the folks who did your wife’s visa will walk you through the process, if not do it for you, but it’s pretty straightforward.
But yep, wedding bells first
And depending on whether her Canadian and U.S. positions are both managerial (L-1A vs. L-1B) she may have a pretty straightforward route to a green card without the normally required U.S. labor market testing, which is a huge deal. Sounds like you guys should set up a 3-way teleconference with the lawyers!
(The category for multinational executives and managers is EB-1 - further details here. And here.)
That’s awesome, Eva. Thanks a lot. Her new position won’t start until December at the earliest - her company still has to win the contract that creates the job for her. I definitely think it would be classified as managerial (GM of a large convention centre) but I’ll look at how Uncle Sam defines it.
She would need to manage a function (which can probably be developed through some creative writing), manage professional employees (meaning they have bachelor’s degrees), and/or manage a multi-level employee hierarchy. In a nutshell, anyway. To avoid labor market testing for a green card, both her Canadian and U.S. positions would have to meet those criteria.
lol.