Quitting job. TN-1 grace period?

Hello,

I'm hoping someone can provide a confirmation for me on this.

My wife and I both have TNs for our jobs in the US, and we have decided to quit our jobs and move home in February.

My TN expires in the first week of March and hers expires in June. I understand, though, that the actual expiry date on the I-94 is meaningless if the job ends before that date (regardless of how the job ends).

I have set my last day at work to be February 17th. I understood that there was a 10-day grace period to leave the country after the job ends or the TN expires, so I'd have to be back in Canada by February 27th. I can't remember where I saw or heard that. We may have been told about it at the border.

Reading various sources on the internet, it seems that there isn't any formal grace period, but instead there is a "reasonable period of time to pack and move", which works out to 10 days.

Is this right?

Personally, if that 10 days isn't a formal grace period, I would prefer to be out of the country as soon as possible after the job ends. I might even set the end date for the job later, leave the day after, just to be sure.

My wife and I are going to have to come back to the US at least once after we leave, for a civil court case (resolving an accident claim from 2009). So, I don't want any issues with our files that will prevent us from coming back. I have no idea when we'd be coming back for that. It could be in March. It could be three years from now.

The grace period is pretty flexible and unofficial for TN. You will be out-ot-status on day one, but will not be "in trouble" until your actual I-94 expiry date.

You will need to be back in Canada AND have re-established Cdn ties before you will be let back in as a toursist, so you might want to get things statrted ASAP by moving back in February.

Thanks! I appreciate the help.

I'm in the process of looking for work right now, and we'll be staying with my wife's parents for a few weeks. We'll be looking for an apartment fairly soon after arriving, though.

Now that my wife and I are back in Canada, I have a followup question for this thread.

Now that we are back, how do we determine if we have established sufficient ties so that we are eligible to return to the US as a tourist?

Is there somewhere we can check that?

Some details: We both turned in our I-94 cards at the border, and we specified with the Canada Customs officers that our return to Canada was permanent. We are currently living with my wife's parents, so we don't have a place of our own yet, but this address is the one we'd been using as our permanent Canadian address while we were living in the US. All of our belongings are back in Ontario (although they are stored in a PODS warehouse). We have switched our driver's licenses over to Ontario. We have re-registered our car in Ontario. We will have our applications in soon to be back on OHIP. We both have bank accounts, credit cards, and loans/lines-of-credit with Canadian banks (we've had those all along, using her parents' address). We still have our US bank accounts and credit cards, but I am changing the permanent addresses of those accounts to our Canadian address. Neither of has a job here, but I have a few interviews coming up, and my wife is registered for college (starting in September).

Thanks

Now that we are back, how do we determine if we have established sufficient ties so that we are eligible to return to the US as a tourist?

If you are going back to the US for the court case you mentioned in your original post, and you can confirm that to the CBP with court papers, then I would think you'd be given an I-94 for the time you need, maybe a week or so. If you are trying to enter for any other reason than that, I think you may have a problem seeing neither of you is employed in Canada nor do you have your own residence. Rent receipts from your wife's parents might help, but it still may be a stretch. You've only been back in Canada for approx. 1 month.

You ahve done enough to re-establish Cdn ties, and should be let back in. Now, as Teddy says, the REASON for going to US will determine if and for how long they admit you.

Thanks for the replies.

Teddy, you are correct, we will be returning for our court trial. We'll make sure to get documentation from our lawyers to show Customs.

I still welcome any comments/ideas, if there's anything else anyone wants to add.