Going to work at the same US company as my SO in September, however my SO is in the last stage of acquiring Canadian citizenship whereas I already have a TN. SO is weeks away from a new grad start date in the states, but SO is technically meant to start in the company's Canadian office as long as SO isn't Canadian. It's too late this year for h1b and SO has no TN option yet, but it looks like citizenship will come after their start date. If SO starts in Canada, they will be locked into an 18mth rotation contract without an option to move to the States during it. The company says they don't want to petition for a TN visa for SO because of a high risk of denial. Are they pulling our leg because they're too lazy to deal with this messy situation? Should I believe that their visa chances are actually slim due to SO being a new Canadian citizen?
Cant you just marry and get family visa?
OP said he/she had a TN status. Spouse of TNs, classified as TD, don’t have any work authorization.
Legally speaking nowhere in the NAFTA treaty or the US immigration law they have a place where they requires someone to have Canadian citizenship for a minimum period of time to be eligible for a TN status. However, one of the thing they have to verify is an applicant’s ties to Canada. An officer, to admit someone in a non immigrant status, must be convinced that the applicant intent to stay temporarily in the US and will return to his home country at the end of their status. Having no work, no family, no long history, no residence, no spouse in Canada will weight a lot in that decision.
And I can understand your company to be cautious with your specific case. Your spouse ties to Canada feels weak. And a denial is part of an applicant’s permanent file in the USCIS databases. And to overturn a denial is challenging. And might weaken more your spouse apparents ties to Canada.
These types of questions are best answered on forums like the one below and not on Blind: https://forums.immigration.com/forums/tn-status.230/ In all my years on TN, this is the first time I hear this garbage.
Are you naturalized Canadian ?
My parents immigrated to Canada when I was a kid. So, yes.
I saw something similar when I got my TN back in 2011. A woman in front of me was having a lot of trouble because the immigration officer believed getting Canadian citizenship was for the sole purpose of moving to the US. From what I overheard she only recently got citizenship at the time. They asked me about how I got Canadian citizenship, how long I had it for and so on too. I got my citizenship several years before so I didn’t have trouble.