The Architect category permits a baccalaureate or licenciatura degree or a state/provincial licence. A foreign degree can support an application when the relevant credential and professional-duty requirements are met; an existing qualifying licence is another credential route. Neither route eliminates the other TN conditions.
Compare the degree, then compare the duties
Decide which credential will support the application before commissioning an evaluation. If relying on a degree from outside Canada, Mexico or the United States, obtain the required reliable evaluation and supporting academic records. If relying on a qualifying licence, document its issuer and validity.
Then assess the proposed architectural activities separately, including any destination-state limits on practice. Two further conditions apply regardless of how the credential question resolves, and they are worth confirming while the evaluation is being commissioned rather than after it returns. The work must be prearranged professional employment with a U.S.
employer and cannot be structured as self-employment, which matters in a field where practitioners frequently operate through their own practice or are engaged as consultants to a firm. And the authorization attaches to a particular employer and the position described, so a role expected to broaden into project management or business development within its first year raises a question worth putting now. Hypothetical example: an architect offered a role designing retail interiors is asked how the practice intends to engage them, and the answer — that the firm expected to contract with the applicant's own studio — reshapes the analysis before a single transcript has been ordered.