The organization must be doing business in the United States and at least one other country while the person holds the classification, so the overseas side matters throughout, not only at filing. How that applies to a particular structure is a legal assessment; the practical task is keeping the foreign operation genuinely running and documented.
Treat continuity as an ongoing obligation
Plan for evidence of foreign activity across the whole period, not a snapshot dated near the filing. Invoices, payroll, contracts and routine filings all serve. Decide who is responsible for keeping that record once the principal is abroad and absorbed in a new operation.
Where the foreign entity would in practice go dormant, raise it with counsel early, because it affects the viability of the plan rather than only its paperwork. One point deserves stating precisely, because it is the condition most often assumed rather than checked. Both entities generally need to be doing business, meaning the regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services, and an entity that exists only as a registered name with an agent's address does not meet that description.
The requirement applies across the period rather than at a single moment, so a foreign business that becomes dormant after the principal leaves creates a problem that is structural rather than evidentiary. Decide now what minimum level of activity the foreign entity will maintain and who is accountable for it. Hypothetical example: a publishing group plans for its foreign company to pause acquisitions for a year while the principal establishes the U.S.
operation, and the pause turns out to be the single most consequential item in the plan.