IN THIS GUIDE · Aligning the branch or subsidiary decision with the corporate records behind an L-1A case
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Describe the US operation before naming it
Work out what the operation will actually do. Will it hold its own contracts, employ people directly, and file its own returns, or operate as an extension of the foreign entity under the same legal person? A branch and a subsidiary can each satisfy the requirement for a qualifying parent, branch, subsidiary, or affiliate relationship, so the choice turns on tax, liability, and administration rather than on immigration considerations alone. Answer four questions before choosing a label: who will sign customer contracts, who will employ staff, who will file returns, and who carries liability if something goes wrong. The answers usually make the structure obvious, and they are also the facts an immigration reviewer will look for. Deciding the label first and fitting the answers to it afterwards produces records that contradict one another.
Make the chosen relationship provable
The relationship has to be real and documented, not merely intended. For a subsidiary that means incorporation records, issued shares, and evidence of who controls them. For a branch it means registration of the foreign entity to carry on business, with the connection to the head office visible on the face of the record. Both entities must be doing business. A structure agreed at a meeting but never registered leaves a reviewer nothing to examine. Ask for the registration document itself rather than a confirmation that registration was done. Certificates of incorporation, share issuance records, and, for a branch, the filing registering the foreign entity to carry on business are what a reviewer reads. Both entities must also be doing business, meaning the regular provision of goods or services, so evidence of activity on each side belongs alongside the constitutional documents.
Align the operating records with the structure
Once the structure is chosen, the day-to-day paperwork needs to agree with it. Leases, bank accounts, insurance, supplier contracts, invoices, and payroll should all name the same entity. Mixed records, such as premises taken by the parent while a subsidiary issues the invoices, raise questions that cost more to answer later than to prevent now. Ask the accountant and corporate lawyer to correct the naming before immigration evidence is assembled. Run a naming audit: list the lease, the bank account, the insurance policy, the supplier contracts, the invoices, and the payroll registration, and write the exact legal name appearing on each. Any name that differs is a question waiting to be asked. Correcting them is administrative while the operation is small and becomes expensive once contracts have been performed under the wrong name.
Plan for the new-office rules if the operation is starting
If the US operation is new, the analysis changes shape. A new-office L-1A case must show the operation will support a managerial or executive position within one year, and an initial new-office approval is limited to one year. Plan what the business is expected to look like at that point: premises, hiring, funding, and customers. Advisers can help assemble the plan and structural records; counsel should decide how structure and the new-office rules interact. Hypothetical example: a specialty fastener maker weighs registering a branch against incorporating a subsidiary for its first United States operation. Either can support the qualifying relationship provided it genuinely exists and is documented. What the choice does not answer is whether the proposed duties are primarily managerial or executive, or whether one continuous qualifying year abroad within the preceding three years is evidenced; a new-office approval is also limited to one year initially.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.