Making traveling to US to attend conferences more efficient with ESTA / ETA
I have a work contract with a US company and, for that reason, I can't stay in the US for more than couple of days since I need to work. Working while in the country would violate my visa and Federal law under which the company employs me. I would risk being banned from entering the country which would heavily affect my future professional life.
However, during the summer I travel almost every week from the EU to the US to attend conferences as a visitor. This is not a paid activity and I don't perform work while visiting. I can enter the US as many times as I am permitted, when I have a valid reason to go there.
This is very time consuming. Therefore, I thought I should apply for a Canadian ETA, and find a temporary accommodation in Canada, and travel back and forth to the US. It would reduce my travel from 20 hours to just 2 hours, and eliminate jet lag. I can enter both countries and I can work for foreign company while being in Canada, in both cases without problems as long as I don't overstay and get caught. It is not clear whether I could travel frequently between the US and Canada without issues.
The biggest issue I think could be the Canadian border as it would be perhaps hard to explain why do I need to come and return each week from US other than to shorter my travel times.
As I understand it, this would be perfectly legal. It's just 2 hours to fly from Montreal to NYC and the cost of travel is equivalent to the price of temporary accommodation in Canada.
I will contact both the Canadian and US border agencies for their opinion but it just occurred to me that I may wrong and this would be a problem.
Best Answer
Here's what the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says about What kind of activities are not considered to be “work”?:
long distance (by telephone or internet) work done by a temporary resident whose employer is outside Canada and who is remunerated from outside Canada;
In Canadian terminology, "temporary residents include visitors, students, workers and temporary resident permit holders" (source).
This is you. What you do is not considered to be work. Welcome to Canada and enjoy your stay!
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Answer 2
De jure there are dozens of complex laws and regulations regarding remote employment, under which you may or may not be violating the conditions of your visa by working remotely for your US employer while visiting the US. Canada might also have laws against remote employment, although @chx seems to provide a quote stating the opposite.
De facto, as long as you don't mention your remote job to immigration personnel at the airport/land crossing, there's a 99.99% chance no one will ever find out. There are millions of people breaking the law by being employed at on-site jobs in the USA, so digital nomads are a pretty low priority for law enforcement. It would probably be even more suspicious to keep traveling from Canada every week, rather than coming for long periods of time to visit the conferences.
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