Read the general life across the border overview
Hypothetical example: Yolande is a chartered professional accountant in Stratford. Her husband has been offered work in the United States and the household assumes she will accompany him and find a position there. Whether she can depends entirely on which category he uses, and in one of them the answer is a flat no. Because Accountant is itself a listed occupation, the better question is not what she may do as a dependant but whether she should be applying in her own right.
The dependent category is defined by the principal's, and one of them forbids work
Dependants of a professional admitted under the USMCA rules may live in the United States and may study, and they may not work, at any point, for any employer, including remotely for one in this province. Dependants of an intracompany transferee and of a treaty investor are in a different position: a spouse in those categories is employment-authorized incident to status and may work for anyone. The household therefore needs to know which category the husband is using before anyone resigns a position here. That single fact changes the family's income by the whole of a second salary.
Accountant is on the list, and it has its own rule
The entry is satisfied by a baccalaureate or licenciatura degree, or by holding a recognised professional accounting designation such as chartered accountant, certified public accountant, certified general accountant or certified management accountant. Yolande's designation reaches it directly. What she would still need is her own prearranged professional position with an American employer, described in a letter as accounting work, and she could not be self-employed there. Her application stands or falls on its own facts and is not helped or hindered by her husband's, which is precisely why it is worth preparing separately rather than as an afterthought.
Children are assessed individually, and two dates end eligibility
A child may accompany a parent as a dependant while unmarried and under 21, and may attend school in that status without separate permission. Two events end it: the twenty-first birthday and marriage. A household with a seventeen-year-old should therefore plan the university years now, because a student who ages out mid-degree needs a route of their own, arranged in advance rather than in the semester it becomes urgent. A child with a different citizenship from the parents is assessed on that citizenship, which can mean different documents and a different appointment for one member of the same family.
Write one line per person before comparing any categories
The most useful exercise a household can do costs nothing. For each person, write the citizenship on their passport, their age, and what they intend to do in the United States: work, study, run a business or none of those. Then read the routes against that list rather than against the household as a unit. Almost every avoidable problem in family relocations comes from treating one approval as covering everyone, and almost every one of them is visible on that page before a single form is filed. Where two people both need to work, expect two applications.
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.