Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Build an operating record across the revenue cycle
Match contracts, delivery activity and invoices over the relevant period. Explain work performed before billing and distinguish it from future orders. L-1 doing business means regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services; incorporation and one unusually strong invoice cannot establish that record. The qualifying group must operate in the United States and another country during the relevant stay.
Connect the transferee to the qualifying organizations
Document the actual corporate relationship and one continuous full-time qualifying foreign employment year within the relevant three years. Exclude US days from that year without automatically treating qualifying brief visits as interruptions. Foreign service may be managerial, executive or specialized knowledge for an ordinary L-1A transfer; the US role must independently be primarily managerial or executive. New-office L-1A specifically needs the foreign managerial or executive year.
Explain what the manager does when revenue is uneven
Identify the applicant’s decisions and the personnel or function managed, then show who handles the underlying operational work. A first-line supervisor of nonprofessional workers does not qualify merely through a title. Use the actual operating cycle to explain staffing and responsibilities instead of assuming that a revenue dip changes everyone’s duties in the same way.
Assess launch capacity on actual business dates
If US doing business is less than one year, apply the new-office framework. Show sufficient premises and how the operation will support the qualifying managerial or executive role within one year; initial approval cannot exceed one year. Identify which resources are currently available and which depend on anticipated receipts. An unsupported forecast does not become current capacity because the company needs it for a filing.
Executive capacity is about direction, not supervision
The regulations treat periods spent in the United States in lawful status, working for a parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate of the same employer, as not interruptive of the year of continuous employment abroad — while also not counting toward it. A manager directs an organization, department, subdivision or an essential function, supervises professional or supervisory staff or manages that function at a senior level, and holds discretion over day-to-day operations. L-1 rests on ownership and control between the two employers — parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate — and no amount of trading history substitutes for it. Executive capacity is a further alternative again, resting on direction of the organization or a major component with wide latitude in discretionary decision-making. In a machining business the managerial question deserves care, since operations managers in smaller shops often spend much of their week doing the work rather than directing an organization that performs it. Obtain the intercompany services agreement, the payroll registers and the tax filings, then establish whether the paying entity is itself a parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate of the petitioner. A function-management case needs senior authority over an essential function, with someone performing its operating work; first-line supervision of nonprofessionals alone is insufficient. The proposed organization chart, delegation records and descriptions of subordinate roles should show authority in practice, not merely a managerial title.
Managing people and managing a function are different claims
The petition should state what proportion of the transferee's time will go to managing people or a function, setting policy, hiring and firing, and budget authority, and what proportion to hands-on operational tasks. A manager of the function decides which procedures the company will adopt, assigns audits to site safety coordinators or external consultants, approves training programs, signs off on regulatory submissions prepared by others and answers to the executive team for outcomes.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.