TN Visa Category Left Unchanged in NAFTA Successor Agreement: The "United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement"

The governments of the United States, Mexico and Canada recently concluded the process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a trilateral trade bloc agreement that originally came into force on January 1, 1994. The successor agreement has been descriptively renamed as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and it is anticipated that Presidents Trump, Enrique Peña Nieto and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will sign the agreement on November 30, 2018, before it is submitted to U.S. Congress and its respective counterparts for a vote and any necessary enacting legislation.

While the USMCA contains new and updated terms and provisions concerning various substantive areas, including tariff arrangements in the automotive sector, improved labor and environmental rights, and engaging in trade with non-party countries, Chapter 16, which contains the provisions governing the TN non-immigrant visa category for temporary workers, survived intact and with no material changes.