Moving some household items south while on a TN...

[SarniaGrl]

Hi everyone,

How have your experiences been in moving personal belongings (furniture, small household) to the U.S. when you're working here on a TN? I've heard you can't (shouldn't?) move anything down lest CBP thinks you're planning on staying long-term (ie; H1B), and any experiences and input would be appreciated.

[perkyj]

First TN in 2000, we sold our house in Canada, bought a house in US and moved 11,000 pounds of furniture and one car to the US. They asked us what would happen if there was an end to the job or status and we said we'd sell the house and move back. That seemed to satisfy the question at the time. Husband was transferred back to Canada 2 years later and that's exacly what we did. In 2004, we came to the US again with about 1/2 of our furniture, but certainly what others might call a 'household'. The furniture came separately though and they didn't even ask about it, but cleared it when the carrier arrived behind us. We've since sold the Canadian home and all of the rest of the contents, so everything we own is here in the US. We're given permission to reside in the US for 1 year, and there is no stipulation that I've ever seen that requires us to maintain 2 households. If someone can point me to that information, please post a link. We very much intend to leave the US with all of our belongings if and when our status here is lost. I'd love to hear stories of anyone being denied because they were bringing all of their personal belongings across. This is just my experience and offered as information for you to make your own decision.

[Steven]

Well, it's entirely lawful for someone who is a visitor in B-2 status to have a vacation home in the US and bring in their personal effects without duty in order to furnish their vacation home, so given that TN-1 status is more permanent than a simple visitor I can't see that it would be a problem.

Just make sure they don't try and hit you up for duty, it all needs to be clearly listed on the manifest as personal effects and under US law, it has to have been in your possession for at least a year to be considered personal effects.