If you are Canadian or Mexican national, you could qualify for a TN Visa. Most TN occupations require a Bachelor’s degree in a related field, but you could also qualify for a TN if you only have a Master’s degree in relevant field and your Bachelor’s degree is in an unrelated field.
To qualify for a TN visa you must have an offer of employment from a U.S. company to work in a profession that is listed on the NAFTA occupation list. For most of the TN professions, you will need a degree in a related field, but there are some positions (such as Management Consultant), for which you could qualify based only upon your experience.
The question that sometimes arises is: Your TN profession requires a Bachelor’s degree. You have a Bachelor’s degree in an unrelated field and a Master’s degree in the field of the TN profession. Is the Master’s degree sufficient to qualify you for a TN visa?
The answer is: yes. The Foreign Affairs Manual indicates that for those occupations that require a degree, you should have at least a baccalaureate degree or appropriate credentials, which means that you could have either a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in the appropriate field.
Example
You have a Bachelor’s degree in Science and Master’s degree in Finance/Accounting. From the Bachelor’s degree transcripts, you would not be able to point to many finance/accounting/math courses you took, but the Master’s degree courses are much more specialized and you took many courses in accounting. Here, you could qualify for the TN based just on your Master’s degree as that degree is in the relevant field. If there are at least some relevant courses you took while doing the Bachelor’s degree, you could still submit both the Bachelor’s and Master’s diplomas and transcripts, but the Master’s diploma and transcripts will be sufficient.
Please click here to find out whether you need an evaluation of your foreign educational credentials for a TN visa.
You can find a list of documents you will need for your TN interview here.
Please click here to find out whether a TN visa requires sponsorship.
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