“Business Visitor” travel to Canada for remote worker under US incorporation of Canadian company - go ahead or avoid?
Hello all,
I am a remote-work software developer in the US who has worked with a Canadian company for the last two years, formally as an employee of its US incorporation in Delaware. I work on a team with other Canadian developers, but I’m employed under the US incorporation, so we aren’t compensated by the same entity.
I have been traveling across the border for various little team building activities and in person meetings every few months. To be honest, I marked myself as going for ‘personal’ or ‘work’ on different occasions, as I’d been made to understand that business visitor travel lived in a gray area that I didn’t understand well. However, at customs last February, I told them I was traveling for work and had to withdraw my application. My boss corrected me, told me I’m going as a business visitor, and sent me back again - I got grilled by customs and had to withdraw again after the presiding border agent didn’t trust my documentation. It’s worth noting that these trips didn’t usually have full agendas planned, and the empty spaces in my schedule were part of the reason for denial.
After this I spoke with my HR team about getting a work visa, but they pushed back after speaking with an attorney and asked me to travel as a business visitor. I’m slated to travel this week again, with a full schedule of meetings with Canadian company employees and paystubs/invitation letters but no work visa. As I understand it there’s gray area here, and I know I will be pulled into secondary with a flagged passport - is this legally sound or should I push back and avoid this business trip?