TN visa, part-time work and studying

[marianevans]

I'd be so grateful if any of you guys could advise me. I've been offered a job teaching a course to undergraduates at the US university where I was formerly a student. I have an MA in the field and so in that sense I am qualified as a "teacher" according to the Nafta list of professions.

One potential problem is that the teaching job is part-time--I will teach 3 classes per week, and including preparation and interacting with students, the job will take about 2.5 days per week. However, the university counts it as a "quarter-time" job and may describe it that way on my employment letter. At the same university, I have also been offered 6 hours per week as a research assistant, so in effect I have employment for approx 3.5 days per week, but I am concerned that I might get denied a TN since I will only be working part-time. Do you think the INS at the border will grant me a visa on the basis of this level of part-time work?

To complicate the situation even more, I am still working on an unfinished PhD, which I started at the university that is now hiring me as a teacher. However, I am not enrolled as a student, and have not had student visa status since 2005. Will it be a problem that I will be continuing to study in my own time while in the US on the TN visa?

Thanks so much for reading this.

[axolotl]

Part-time work is allowed on a TN.

As for studying, it depends -- your primary motive for being in the US on a TN must be your job. You are allowed to take classes part-time, even as part of a degree program, so I would imagine that if you are working on a thesis or something, that would probably be permitted as well.

[Steven]

Legally you can do it. TN-1 was designed expressly for cross-border workers so being a full-time position isn't relevant (provided you have sufficient funds to live on), you could get TN-1 for example if you were a doctor and had a single patient in the US you have to go and visit.

Study is permitted on TN-1 also, provided it's not the main focus on your stay in the US.

However, what the CBP guy who deals with the application thinks is impossible to say. I've seen some odd comments from CBP about TN-1 lately, like you can have a second TN-1 only if that position is part-time, which sounds like total nonsense to me, for example if you are a consulting physician and work for a variety of hospitals, who is to say which position is full-time and which one is part-time?

[marianevans]

Thanks so much for these helpful responses! I'm going to go for it, and I'll make sure I emphasize that most of my time will be spent on paid employment not study. I'll let you know how it goes.