You’ve accepted a position with a tech company in Seattle and you’re crossing at Peace Arch on a TN visa you’ve held for two years. The officer starts asking questions you didn’t expect. Or you own a company that has been operating across the border for months, and someone just told you that your corporate structure creates an immigration liability you weren’t aware of. Or your family petition has been sitting in a U.S. queue for three years and a procedural error has just restarted the clock.
These are not edge cases on this side of the border. They are Tuesday. Cross-border professional movement between Canada and the United States is not occasional, it is continuous, and the cost of a misstep, a denial, a restarted timeline, status revoked at the border, is not abstract.
Ankeny Law is a U.S. immigration law firm with an office at 666 Burrard Street downtown. Lead attorney Jason Ankeny is licensed in British Columbia, Washington and Arizona, so the U.S. side and the Canadian side of a cross-border matter are handled by one immigration lawyer and one team rather than two law firms.
WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST
Why a U.S. Immigration Lawyer Based in Vancouver
Most immigration law firms in this city handle Canadian immigration law: Express Entry, work permits, business immigration and permanent residence in Canada. That is valuable work, and it is not what most of our clients need. The clients who call this office are Canadians and permanent residents of Canada who need to work, invest or live in the United States, and businesses in the Lower Mainland moving workers and goods south. For those immigration matters, a Canadian immigration lawyer is the wrong hire, and a US immigration lawyer Vancouver clients can meet in person is rare.
That is a different body of immigration law and a different set of legal services, adjudicated by different agencies, and the file is judged by a U.S. officer at the port of entry or a U.S. consular officer downtown. Whether the traveller is a TN professional or one of the thousands of business visitors crossing each week, preparing the file well means knowing how those officers actually decide, and that is where Jason’s expertise is unlike any other attorney’s in British Columbia.
Before practicing law, Jason served as a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Officer and then a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Supervisor at the Washington and British Columbia boundary, more than 15 years inside the adjudication system that now evaluates the applications he prepares. When a TN file is assembled by this team, he is not working from a checklist and he is not offering generic advice. He is working from what the officer reviewing that file will look for, what documentation gaps trigger denials, and what explanations defuse concerns before they become problems. That is knowledgeable, specific advice, and it is the difference between a file that clears and one that does not.
EXPERIENCED CROSS-BORDER COUNSEL
U.S. Immigration Services for Vancouver and British Columbia
These immigration services cover a broad range of cases and are organized around the ones that actually come through the door. The focus is the same in each: get the file right the first time.
TN status under USMCA. The fastest route for qualifying Canadian professionals into U.S. employment, and the one most often refused over paperwork rather than qualifications. First-time TN visa cases, second and third attempts after prior denials, and the professionals we assist whose job description sits at the edge of a qualifying category. Navigating that edge is where expertise matters most. It moves fast when the file is right.
E-2 treaty investor visas. For Canadian investors and business owners establishing or buying a U.S. company, the E-2 visa is the primary route. The petition rests on the entity, so the corporate structure is built with the immigration outcome in mind from the first document, not repaired afterward. Immigration and corporate law are handled together here, not separately, and corporate clients get one point of contact for both.
Business immigration and corporate relocation. L-1 intracompany transfer visas, employer sponsorship, B-1 business visitors, and the multi-employee moves that come when a Lower Mainland company opens U.S. operations. For employers with employees on both sides of the line, ongoing support includes I-9 compliance for staff assigned to U.S. offices and PERM labor certification when the company is ready to sponsor a key employee for permanent residence.
Prior denials and inadmissibility. A refused TN visa, a border turnaround, or an old finding that has followed someone for years. These are the immigration issues that a general practitioner cannot untangle, and the foreign nationals carrying them are often years into an immigration journey that started badly. The I-601 waiver process, consular visa refusals under 214(b), and the record-repair work that a clean reapplication cannot do on its own.
Mandamus and federal court. When a U.S. petition has been pending well beyond published processing times, a mandamus action in federal court compels the agency to decide. The team tracks and supports every pending petition against published processing times, and Jason is admitted before the Ninth Circuit and the Board of Immigration Appeals.
U.S. citizenship. Naturalization and citizenship applications for permanent residents of the United States who live in Canada or the United States, and we assist with the citizenship applications and questions that arise for families with members in both countries.
Canadian Business Immigration, Where It Belongs
The office also handles Canadian business immigration for one specific client: the business owner or investor coming into Canada on a business visa. Canadian work permits, business visitors and permanent residence applications in Canada for entrepreneurs and their families, handled by the same attorney and the same legal team who is preparing the U.S. side of the same family’s file. Refugee claims, study permits and personal Canadian immigration matters are not what this office does, and unlike some law firms, this one will say so at the initial consultation rather than take a case it is not built for.
CASE OUTCOMES
Two Cases That Arrived With a History
Individual results vary. Past outcomes do not guarantee similar results in future matters.
COVERAGE AREA
What Working With This Firm Looks Like
The firm’s office is at 666 Burrard St Ste 500, Vancouver, BC V6C 2X8. Many clients who need cross-border immigration or corporate legal help do not operate from a single address. An owner whose operations extend into surrounding communities, a Canadian professional whose employer is based across the border, and a family with members navigating status issues in different parts of the region all share the same need: a single legal relationship that can hold the full picture without requiring them to manage multiple firms for overlapping issues.
Every engagement, whatever the services involved, begins with a paid initial consultation that covers the whole situation, not the immediate question. Clients get a legal assessment from the immigration team, strategic guidance on the options, a plan, and a price before anything is filed. That first conversation is where timelines get set, costs get clarified, and the issues that were present but unrecognized get named. Roughly three of every four people who book that consultation retain the firm, and clients are told at the outset what a realistic outcome looks like. Employers, foreign nationals on a temporary basis, and families get the same directness and the same support from the whole team, at every stage of the immigration journey.
Jason is moderately fluent in Spanish, which matters for families whose immigration histories run through Latin America. The office serves the Lower Mainland, the rest of British Columbia and, for cross-border business, Calgary and Edmonton. For a client in Canada with a U.S. legal question, this is the immigration law office to call, and the ability to answer it from both sides of the border is the point.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Frequently Asked Questions
Cross-Border and Canadian Immigration Guides
For families and professionals with lives on both sides of the border, these guides cover the Canadian pathways, business visitors and work permits alongside the U.S. ones.
LET’S TALK
Talk to a U.S. Immigration Lawyer in Vancouver
Cross-border immigration cases rarely improve with time. If you are weighing your options, managing an agency delay, or trying to understand what a prior visa denial means for your next filing, direct immigration advice from an attorney who has worked inside these adjudication systems, and who brings that expertise to navigating your specific file, is the fastest way to get clarity. Immigration law firms and their services are not interchangeable, and neither are the lawyers in them.
Vancouver Office: 666 Burrard St Ste 500, Vancouver, BC V6C 2X8 · (604) 314-1848
Seattle Office: 506 2nd Ave, Suite 1400, Seattle, WA 98104 · (206) 686-1589
Call (604) 314-1848 or contact us online to schedule your consultation.
