I’m a Canadian that’s been working on TN status in the US as an engineer. I’ve been working for a small company in California for about a year now. Since the pandemic started we’ve gone basically fully remote and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. A lot of my colleagues have left California and have been working remotely from various locations around the US.
I made a request to return to Canada and was denied. The company stated that since they have no legal presence in Canada, Canadian tax law prohibited me from working remotely there. Moreover they emphasized that I couldn’t even visit temporarily (for a few weeks) since I wasn’t allowed to even work a single day remotely from Canada. This seems bizarre to me since I personally know plenty of friends who are currently working remote from Canada, and several of them for much smaller companies which almost certainty do not have a Canadian legal presence.
I’m not familiar with the details of Canadian tax/immigration law, but I’d be curious if anyone knows if there’s any legitimacy to my company’s claim. From what I can find online there are restrictions on hiring Canadians to work remotely on a permanent basis, but it seems absurd that this would apply to temporary work especially during the pandemic.
[link] [comments]
source https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/iij937/is_it_true_that_my_us_based_employer_legally_cant/