Current as of October 2026. CUSMA work permit rules are set by the agreement and by IRCC’s instructions to officers, and both can change. Please confirm the current requirements before you apply.
A Canadian company wants to hire you. You are an American or Mexican citizen, and someone has told you that you can skip the labour market test and pick up a work permit at the border. That is often true. It is also where many applications go wrong, because the officer is not looking at your job title or your résumé. The officer is checking whether your job and your qualifications fit the agreement, line by line.
This post explains how CUSMA work permits work, who qualifies, where applications run into trouble, and what it means for your family.
What CUSMA is, and who it covers
CUSMA is the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. It replaced NAFTA in 2020 and is called the USMCA in the United States and the T-MEC in Mexico. Its chapter on temporary entry lets certain business people from the three countries work across the border without the LMIA that most foreign workers need. If you are not sure what that exemption means for your job offer, our post on LMIA-based and LMIA-exempt work permits sets out the difference.
Three limits apply from the start.
- It is for citizens only. You must be a citizen of the United States or Mexico. Permanent residents of those countries do not qualify, however long they have lived there. If you hold a U.S. green card but another citizenship, our post on why U.S. permanent residents can enter Canada without a visa explains the travel side, but you will need a different work permit route.
- It does not replace licensing. If your profession is regulated in the province where you will work, you still need that province’s licence, or must be able to obtain it.
- It is temporary. CUSMA is about temporary entry. It does not lead to permanent residence on its own and gives no special rights to your spouse or children. Both points are covered further down.
The agreement has four categories: business visitors, professionals, intra-company transferees, and traders and investors. Business visitors do not need a work permit. The other three do.
Business visitors: when you do not need a work permit
Some activities are allowed without a work permit at all: attending meetings, consulting with Canadian business associates, research and design, buying goods or services for a U.S. or Mexican business, and certain after-sales service under a sales or warranty agreement, among others. The common thread is that you are not entering the Canadian labour market. Your pay and your main place of business stay outside Canada.
If you will be working for a Canadian company, managing a Canadian office, or delivering services to Canadian clients over a period of time, you are almost certainly not a business visitor. You need one of the work permit categories below.
CUSMA professionals: the requirements
The professionals category is the one most people mean when they talk about a CUSMA work permit. IRCC refers to it by the code T36. To qualify, you need four things.
1. An occupation on the list. The agreement contains a fixed list of 63 professions. It includes accountants, architects, computer systems analysts, economists, engineers, graphic designers, hotel managers, industrial designers, interior designers, land surveyors, landscape architects, lawyers, librarians, management consultants, mathematicians and actuaries, research assistants at post-secondary institutions, scientific technicians and technologists, social workers, a range of scientists, a range of medical and allied health professions, and college, seminary and university teachers. If your occupation is not on the list, it is not a CUSMA profession, however skilled the work is. The list has not been updated since 1994, which is why some newer roles are hard to place.
2. The credentials for that occupation. Each profession has its own minimum requirement. Most require a bachelor’s degree or a Mexican licenciatura. Some allow alternatives. A computer systems analyst can qualify with a post-secondary diploma or certificate plus three years of experience. A management consultant can qualify with five years of relevant experience instead of a degree. The degree generally needs to be in the field of the profession or a closely related one.
3. Prearranged work in that profession. You must have a set arrangement to provide professional services in Canada before you apply. That can be a job with a Canadian employer, a contract between you and a Canadian business, or a contract between your U.S. or Mexican employer and a Canadian client. You must actually work in the listed profession. A degree in engineering does not make a sales role an engineering role.
4. No self-employment in Canada. The professionals category does not allow you to set up your own business in Canada and work for it. Officers look at who owns and controls the Canadian business and who receives its income. If you are effectively your own employer in Canada, this category is the wrong fit.
Some professions carry extra conditions. Physicians, for example, may enter only for teaching or research, not to provide direct patient care. Registered nurses need a licence from the province where they will work. Scientific technicians must work in direct support of a qualified professional in a listed field, and a general job offer from that professional is not enough on its own.
How long the permit lasts. An initial CUSMA professional work permit can be issued for up to three years. Extensions can also be granted for up to three years at a time, and there is no fixed limit on the number of extensions. The catch is that the stay must remain temporary. IRCC’s instructions say the longer you stay, the more an officer will expect you to show that you are not using CUSMA as a substitute for immigrating.
Where professional applications run into trouble
Most refusals in this category have nothing to do with whether the applicant is capable. They come from a gap between the list and the paperwork.
- Title versus duties. Officers assess what you will do, not what your business card says. IRCC’s own example is a bookkeeper applying as an accountant. A role called “analyst” or “consultant” will be read against the duties described in the offer.
- Management consultants doing operational work. Under CUSMA, a management consultant advises a client on how to improve its operations. Filling a regular position in the client’s business, such as running a department or doing the day-to-day work, is functional work rather than consulting, and it does not fit the category.
- Technology roles that do not match the list. Many software and IT roles are filed as computer systems analyst, because there is no separate entry for developers, data scientists or cybersecurity analysts. Whether a particular role fits depends on the duties, and offers that describe mainly coding or support work tend to draw closer questions. This is worth getting right before you apply, not at the border.
- Degrees in an unrelated field. A degree in one discipline does not usually qualify you for a profession in another unless the fields are closely related.
- Signs of self-employment. If you own or control the Canadian company that is “hiring” you, expect the officer to ask whether the arrangement is really self-employment.
- A thin offer letter. The offer should confirm the Canadian employer or client, the profession, the job title and duties, how long the work will last, how you will be paid, and the education or credentials the role requires. Vague offers invite refusals.
Bring the evidence that ties these points together: your degree or diploma, any licence or registration, reference letters showing your experience, and a detailed description of the work you will do in Canada.
Intra-company transferees
If you work for a U.S. or Mexican company that has a Canadian parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, you may be able to transfer to the Canadian side. The requirements are:
- One year with the company. You must have worked full-time and continuously for the foreign company for at least one year in the three years before you apply, in a similar position.
- A qualifying relationship. The Canadian and foreign companies must be related as parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, and you should be ready to prove it.
- The right kind of role. You must be coming as an executive, a manager, or an employee with specialized knowledge. Specialized knowledge means both an advanced level of expertise and advanced knowledge that is specific to the company’s products, services, research, equipment, techniques or management. General skill in your field is not enough.
Initial permits can be issued for up to three years, with renewals of up to two years. Total time is capped at seven years for executives and managers and five years for specialized knowledge workers. If you are coming to open a new Canadian office, the first permit is generally limited to one year, because the officer will want to see that the new business is actually getting off the ground before granting more time.
Business owners who want to move themselves to Canada to run a Canadian branch sometimes look at a different intra-company route instead. Our post on owner-operator and intra-company transfer work permits covers that option.
Traders and investors
These categories are for people who run trade or investment between Canada and the U.S. or Mexico. In both, the business must be at least 50 percent owned by citizens of your own country, so a Mexican trader needs a Mexican-owned business and an American trader needs an American-owned one. Ownership decides the company’s nationality, not where it is incorporated, and a U.S. or Mexican citizen who is also a permanent resident of Canada does not count toward that 50 percent. You must work in a supervisory or executive role, or have skills that are essential to the Canadian operation.
Traders must already be carrying on substantial trade in goods or services between Canada and the U.S. or Mexico. The trade must exist through completed sales or binding contracts; you cannot qualify while you are still looking for customers. Officers look at the volume and value of the trade, and more than half of the company’s international trade must be between Canada and the treaty country.
Investors must have made, or be actively making, a substantial investment in a real, operating business in Canada, and must be coming to develop and direct it. There is no fixed minimum amount. The test is proportionality: the investment must be substantial relative to the total cost of the business. Money that is only planned does not count; it must be invested or irrevocably committed. An investment that would only support you and your family, rather than create jobs or economic activity, is treated as marginal and does not qualify.
For both categories, the first work permit is limited to one year, with extensions of up to two years. IRCC’s instructions say that initial applications should be submitted from outside Canada rather than at the border, because these files are document-heavy and are assessed for consistency. If you are weighing investment-based options more broadly, our business immigration page is a good place to start.
The employer’s part
For the professional and intra-company categories, the Canadian employer has a job to do before you can apply. It must submit an offer of employment through IRCC’s Employer Portal and pay the employer compliance fee, unless it falls within an exemption. The portal then generates an offer of employment number, starting with the letter A, which you include in your work permit application. Employers that are exempt from the fee still have to submit the offer.
There is no formal wage test for CUSMA professionals, but pay is still a factor. A salary well below what the profession normally earns can make an officer question whether the job is really professional-level work.
Arriving at the border before the employer has submitted the offer or paid the fee is an easy way to be turned away. Confirm both, and have the offer number in hand, before you travel.
Where and how to apply
U.S. citizens do not need a visitor visa or an eTA to enter Canada, so they can generally apply for a CUSMA work permit at a port of entry when they arrive. That means bringing the full application with you: proof of citizenship, the offer of employment number, your credentials and supporting letters. A border officer decides on the spot, and a refusal there means you cannot start work as planned. For more complex files, applying online before you travel is often the safer choice.
Mexican citizens face an extra step. Since February 29, 2024, Mexican citizens can use an eTA only if they are flying to Canada and either hold a valid U.S. non-immigrant visa or have held a Canadian visitor visa in the past 10 years. Everyone else needs a visitor visa, including anyone arriving by land or sea. If you need a visa, apply for your work permit online before you travel; an approved work permit from outside Canada comes with the visa you need to enter. Our post on whether you need a visa to travel to Canada explains how the visa and eTA rules work.
If you are already in Canada with valid temporary status, you can apply for a CUSMA work permit or an extension online. Since December 23, 2024, the border no longer issues work permits to most people who leave Canada briefly and come straight back to apply, a practice known as flagpoling. U.S. citizens, and professionals and technicians under the free trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, are among the limited exceptions. Even so, the border is not always the right place to bring a file, and an online application avoids a same-day refusal.
Extensions. Each extension needs a new offer of employment from the employer and should be filed online before your current permit expires. If you apply in time, you can keep working under your current conditions while IRCC decides. Our post on maintained status explains how that works and where people lose it.
Changing jobs. A CUSMA work permit is tied to the employer named in it. A new employer means a new offer of employment and a new permit before you start. See our post on changing employers on a closed work permit.
Your spouse and children
CUSMA itself gives family members no special rights. IRCC’s instructions say so directly. Your spouse and children come under Canada’s general rules, and those rules tightened in 2025.
Your spouse or common-law partner may be eligible for an open work permit if you work in Canada in a TEER 0 or 1 occupation, or in one of a select list of TEER 2 or 3 occupations, and your work permit is valid for at least 16 more months when IRCC receives your spouse’s application. Most CUSMA professionals and intra-company executives and managers are in TEER 0 or 1 occupations, so the occupation test is usually met.
The 16-month rule is where families get caught. A one-year trader or investor permit, or a professional permit with less than 16 months left, will not support a spousal open work permit under these rules. If your spouse needs to work, plan the length of your permit and the timing of your spouse’s application together. Our post on spousal open work permits covers the rules in more detail.
Mexican citizens should know about one difference. Mexico is also a member of the CPTPP, another trade agreement Canada has signed, and under the CPTPP the spouse of a Mexican professional, technician, investor or intra-company transferee may be able to get an open work permit through the agreement itself. Depending on the occupation and the family’s needs, that route can be the better fit. Our post on CPTPP work permits explains who qualifies.
Your children are no longer eligible for their own open work permits under the general family measure, unless you are on certain pathways to permanent residence. Minor children who are in Canada with a parent who is authorized to work here can generally attend preschool, primary or secondary school without a study permit.
The 2026 joint review: what it means for work permits
CUSMA required the three countries to hold a joint review in 2026. That review took place on July 1, 2026. Canada’s government said afterwards that the agreement remains fully in force until 2036 and can be renewed at any time, and that the three countries agreed to continue discussions. Under the agreement, if the countries do not all confirm a renewal at the review, they hold a joint review every year after that. Public reporting indicates the United States did not confirm a renewal in July, so annual reviews are expected.
For people applying for work permits, nothing has changed so far. The temporary entry chapter, the list of 63 professions and IRCC’s instructions to officers all still apply. Stakeholders asked Global Affairs Canada during its consultations to modernize the professions list to cover newer roles in technology and other fields, but as of this writing the list has not changed. The agreement also allows any country to withdraw on six months’ notice, so if your plans in Canada are long-term, it is sensible not to rely on CUSMA as your only route.
From a CUSMA work permit to permanent residence
CUSMA is a temporary entry agreement, and it does not lead to permanent residence by itself. The skilled work experience you gain in Canada can count, though. Many CUSMA workers later apply through Express Entry, often in the Canadian Experience Class, or through a provincial nominee program.
Canadian law allows you to intend to stay permanently while holding temporary status, as long as the officer is satisfied you will leave if your status ends. In practice, that balance matters most at extension time. If you have filed for permanent residence or plan to, think about how that fits with each CUSMA extension before you apply, rather than after an officer asks.
How we can help
At Kabir & Alam, we review job offers against the CUSMA requirements before anyone travels, prepare applications for the border or for online filing, and work with employers on the offer of employment. We also help families plan spousal work permits and the move to permanent residence. Read more about our work permit practice or book a consultation with us.
This post is general information about Canadian immigration law and is not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts. Speak with a lawyer about your situation before making decisions.