Read the general pathway comparison overview
Hypothetical example: Cormac owns a marine and small-engine dealership in Nipissing and wants a United States operation. He has been given a comparison chart weighing L-1A against E-2 on duration, spousal work rights and permanent residence. All of that is downstream. The question that decides the route is who will own and control the U.S. entity, and it should be put to his lawyer and accountant before any comparison is read.
The control question, asked precisely
L-1 requires a qualifying relationship between the entities: the U.S. company must be a parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate of the Canadian one, and both must be doing business. That means the Canadian company, or a common ownership structure, must sit above the U.S. entity. E-2 asks something different and in some ways opposite: whether Cormac, as a treaty national, will develop and direct the U.S. enterprise, ordinarily through at least half its ownership or through documented operational control, and whether the enterprise's own ownership is at least half treaty-national. A structure built for one test can quietly fail the other.
What to ask the accountant and the lawyer, in that order
Ask the accountant: is the Canadian dealership incorporated in a way that can hold shares in a U.S. subsidiary, or is it a proprietorship that cannot? Has Cormac been a payroll employee of it for a continuous year within the last three, or taken only dividends? Would the Canadian company fund the U.S. entity, or would Cormac invest personally? Then ask the lawyer to draft the ownership chart both ways and say which conditions each version satisfies and which it breaks. A structure chosen for tax reasons alone frequently rules out one route without anyone noticing until a petition is being prepared.
Read the comparison only after the structure is settled
Once the ownership answer is known, the familiar comparison becomes useful rather than misleading. If the Canadian company will own the U.S. entity and Cormac has the employment history, L-1A is available, capped at seven years, with an L-2 spouse employment-authorized incident to status and a new-office approval limited to one year if the U.S. company is new. If instead Cormac invests personally and controls the enterprise, E-2 fits, the spouse is likewise employment-authorized, there is no corporate-history requirement, but there is no direct path to permanent residence. Neither category permits him to work in the United States as a mechanic on the floor.
What else is on your mind?
Does being a business owner or director qualify me for L-1A?What employment history should an L-1 transfer review cover?What makes a new-office L-1A case different?How should an owner compare L-1 and E-2?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.