hi everyone this is Joseph at Tsang & Associates today we're going to be talking about a TN success
story now TN Visa is kind of like the friends and family special visa for neighboring countries
the united states has a special treaty with Mexico and Canada and allows their nationals to come into
the country more freely as opposed to H-1B's and all the other complicated visas now that doesn't
mean the TN visa is any less difficult it has its own unique challenges as we can see from today's
success story our story today begins with a young girl who graduated pharmacy school having a phd
in hand and having a job offer letter from a huge tech company as a medical assistant now the job is
set to start immediately so she needs to get her visa if she doesn't get the TN visa then she will
be out of the job and she would have to leave the us now what makes this a challenging case is that
the position that was offered is not a pharmacist it's a medical assistant now of course if you can
argue that the two are very similar then they'll be okay but the salary that's offered is only 55
000 in Boston and that is not a normal pharmacist pay and so that makes it secondarily challenging
and what makes it extra challenging on top of that is that the job duties when i saw it was
very poorly written it involved things like translating for the customers and working with
the warehouse and is not what you normally see as a pharmacist position so she did what any smart
person would do she researched a whole bunch about how to apply for this TN application and when she
was doing all her research on reddit some people are saying it's super easy and then other people
are saying it's nearly impossible if the positions and the job duties are completely different than
what she was getting and luckily her family works in the immigration industry her mom is
an immigration consultant in Canada and reached out to us to help her with this TN application
and although it was extremely difficult i want to share with you guys how everybody did it like all
cases it always starts with a really good strategy session so in this initial strategy session when
i'm asking all the questions why are you working for a 55 000 job as a medical assistant when you
have a pharmacy degree and we're trying to explore exactly how we can make the argument i found
out that she actually was interning at this tech company and she has access to all the managers the
general managers the co-workers and we were able to set up an interview with all of them during the
interview i found out from the hr department that everybody they hire for medical assistant position
are all phd graduates from pharmacy school this is key because it led to my second question
why do you need a phd graduate in order to do this position because they said well
basically they are pharmacists online we're doing Telehealth and now that completely makes sense
these tech companies are trying to break into the medical profession hiring these young grads
providing the key insight that everybody needs but they don't want to make an appointment they
don't want to drive down they just want to be able to quickly access this key information and help
Telehealth is totally the trend forward and that's what they're doing what got a little bit sensitive
was when i had to ask well one then why the low pay right why the 55 000 annual salary and they
explained well it's not exactly fair comparing their 55,000 salary to a normal pharmacist
who've been in practice for years and years most people who graduate they intern they do clerkships
they are not exactly a pharmacist and that pay is actually much lower than the 55,000 especially
working at a tech company you get all the benefits of working at a big corporation the 401k the PTO
and all the other health benefits getting these key insights during the interview process was
absolutely key in building the case because once we got this information we're able to build into
the cover letter the attorney brief and the offer letter and all the documentation so that when she
went before the CBP officer to prove her case to apply for a TN application she was able to
present everything succinctly and answer all their questions now that was only part one of the battle
because even though we got everything we needed and we were able to quickly put it together
now we need to train her so that she can present everything before the officer
recognize that these officers review these TN applications day in and day out the moment is
strays from the NAFTA where your position is not exactly the same position on the treaty
if your job duties is different than what normal pharmacists would do if your salary doesn't match
if they have all these questions and you can't answer it or even if
the package answers it but you cannot deliver it if they are not convinced
the application would be denied now we expected there to be a difficult interview because there
were multiple red flags there's a raging pandemic going on and she needed to prove that she's an
essential worker part of the exception she's able to come in and start work immediately and we have
such a short time to do all of this and that leads us to the second key to success we did a lot of
mock interviews with this client i pretended i was a CBP officer challenging her every single
time on different fronts why the low salary what do you do what does a pharmacist do on a normal
basis why aren't you doing that why didn't you pursue to be a pharmacist as opposed to doing this
all those questions now when she actually went to the interview she was grilled for over an
hour because of the low salary she was challenged about the position but after her explanation it
was okay but it was a salary that tripped up the officer at one point the officer even said a nanny
in New York gets paid more than 55,000 a year and you are a pharmacist this just doesn't make sense
the officer even went to the extent to make her go home to get collect additional documentation
to bring to the interview luckily she doesn't live too far her dad was able to go back bring it over
she takes it and brings it back to the interview all with a plane that's about to depart if she
misses the flight she might have to wait the next day if she can't get the tn visa within these two
days she might miss the first day of job she might lose her job and she might not be able to enter
the u.s she has a visa denial on her record it is all a huge nightmare luckily the case ended up
approved she's super happy and when she finally touched base in Boston we were able to review
everything that happened and super thrilled that it was a success so we asked how did you
stand your ground when the officer continuously challenge you over the low salary or over the job
position and she said well it's the same answers just different ways and it's all because of those
mock interviews and that's the key takeaway to this case the client knew she had a very difficult
case sought help got the guidance she needed collected all the documents to prove her case
rehearsed it over and over again so that when she was challenged by an officer she has the answers
to secure the victory her determination to succeed overshadowed her fear of failure and that reminds
me too when people ask me what are some creative ways and creative solutions to win a case that has
a low salary or different job duties or different job positions and i think the answer is don't take
no for an answer there's so many ways to prove a case for example your job duties for your position
everyone has a different opinion about what your job duties are going to be when you talk to the hr
department your job duty is exactly what's going to be in the handbook when you talk to the project
manager who's your actual manager they know what you will be doing as opposed to what you're being
hired to do now when you talk to co-workers who are actually in this position they know what
you're going to be doing on a day-to-day basis and not just the high-minded projects that's out there
so depending on who you talk to you have different job duties and different job positions and you can
craft your letter and your argument accordingly and same thing with the salary so don't take no
for an answer keep on exploring different options the crucial thing is because of the limited amount
of time that people have when they prepare TN applications typically a week or two weeks
because the offer letter comes you need to enter the us with a valid visa in order to start working
you have to get everybody on board strategize get all the documentation prep and also come up with a
plan b in case your case was denied at the airport what are you going to do in order to come back in
and that's a wrap for our TN success story if you like this type of success story where we dive in
and talk about the ins and outs and the strategy and the pitfalls and the takeaways
please like subscribe and follow we have hundreds of other success stories where we're going to
dive in and share just like this one we also post the updated news on our Linkedin facebook
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and of course we want to thank you for watching thank you for being the best part of these success
story videos if you have any questions feel free to reach out to us my name is Joseph Tsang at
Tsang & Associates we specialize in solving legal problems with creative solutions take care bye-bye