The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement
This agreement gives nobody a right to live anywhere, and the page exists to say so. It is the only bloc in this corpus whose honest answer to almost every question here is that it does nothing. What its Chapter 16 does is narrower and real: it makes each of the three states grant **temporary entry** to a business person of another, in a profession listed in an appendix, on proof of citizenship of a party - and forbids that state to demand a labour certification test or to cap how many come. Everything else on a reader's list - residence, naturalisation, health cover, a driving licence, what a settler may bring through customs - is decided by each state alone, exactly as it would be with no agreement at all.
Decided for every member
One instrument, the same answer in each member state. The quotations are on the country records; these rows say which instrument and where to read it.
Temporary entry for a professional listed in Appendix 2, with labour certification tests and numerical limits forbidden. It is an exemption from a labour market test, not a residence.
Canada
Mexico
United StatesLeft to each member
Where the bloc stops. These are the questions a reader has to ask country by country, and the note says what the records here show about the spread.
National, and asymmetric. Canada exempts United States nationals and United States permanent residents outright and puts Mexico in the conditional table at section 7.01 of its Regulations.
National. No party undertakes anything about someone living on money from abroad.
National, and in all three records an absence recorded against a closed list of classes.
National. Canada's start-up business class, the American EB-5 and Mexico's own routes have nothing to do with each other or with this agreement.
National, and in Canada partly provincial.
National. Sponsorship is each state's own law.
National, and none of the three has a residence route by descent.
National. Nothing in the agreement touches naturalisation, and the three residence requirements differ.
National, and where it is shared it is shared by tax treaties rather than by this agreement.
National, and in Canada provincial.
National, and in Canada provincial: Ontario names the United States in its own regulation and does not name Mexico.
National. Each state's rules on identifying a customer stand alone.
National. Each state writes its own relief for a settler's goods.
This is the topic the agreement lives on, and each country's record quotes Chapter 16 for itself.
What it actually confers
Temporary entry, and the chapter says so in its title: Temporary Entry for Business Persons. Section D makes each party grant it to someone engaging in a business activity at a professional level in a profession set out in Appendix 2, on two documents - proof of citizenship of a party, and documentation describing the purpose of entry. Paragraph 2 is the half that bites: no prior approval procedures, no petitions, no labour certification tests, and no numerical restriction. Paragraph 3 then preserves a visa requirement notwithstanding all of it, which is why a Mexican professional can still need a Canadian document that an American does not.
How it reaches an immigration officer at all
Not directly. A treaty is not Canadian or American or Mexican immigration law, and in Canada the join is visible in the text: section 204(a) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations lets a work permit be issued for work performed under an agreement between Canada and the government of a foreign state, and names no state. The agreement supplies the parties the regulation leaves out. What an officer asks for on the day sits in ministerial instructions that no party publishes as law.
Why the membership list is the whole of the symmetry
Three states, each of them a destination in this corpus and each of them an origin. The same clause that lets a Mexican accountant into Canada lets a Canadian one into Mexico, which is why the regulation can describe the arrangement by its kind rather than by its parties. Every other bloc here has members this corpus does not cover; this one has none.
What a reader coming from the European Union page should not assume
That the headings mean the same thing. The Union decides who needs a visa for Spain and for Portugal with one regulation and gives its citizens a residence right in each other's states. This agreement does neither. Canada, Mexico and the United States each run their own entry regime against the other two, and the records here show them doing it: Canada exempts United States nationals and United States permanent residents from the visitor visa by its own regulation, and puts Mexico in a table where an electronic authorization is conditional on documents already held.