IN THIS GUIDE · Initial L-1A review weighing the year abroad, the corporate relationship, and managerial capacity as one question
Map the year abroad against a real calendar
L categories generally look for one continuous year of qualifying employment with the related company abroad within the relevant preceding three-year period, and that timing analysis is case specific. Build a month-by-month employment history rather than a summary: entity name, position, reporting line, and any unpaid leave, secondment, or time already spent working in the United States. Payroll records and organisational charts prepared during that period are more persuasive than a current résumé written for recruiters. Mark on that calendar any month in which the employing entity changed, since a reorganisation inside a group can move a person between entities without anyone experiencing a change of job. The year has to be with a qualifying entity, so the identity of the employer in each month is the fact that matters rather than the continuity of the work.
Prove the corporate relationship on paper
The transferring employer and the receiving employer must stand in a qualifying parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate relationship, and the qualifying organisation must be doing business as that term is used in the L context. Ask for share registers, incorporation documents, and any agreements that changed ownership since the applicant was hired. Where holding companies or minority investors sit between the two entities, the ownership and control question deserves counsel's attention before anyone drafts a support letter. Ask for the documents dated after the most recent change rather than the set assembled when the transfer was first discussed, because groups reorganise more often than files are updated. Where a registry lags the event, obtain the instrument that effected the change as well as the extract, so the position can be established without waiting for a register to catch up.
Describe managerial or executive capacity by function
A title, a headcount, or a share of the business does not establish managerial or executive capacity on its own. Set out what the person decides, what they can approve without asking, and who or what they direct. Managing an essential function can qualify where the factual showing supports it, so describe the function, the applicant's seniority within the organisation, and who performs the day-to-day tasks the applicant does not. Routine first-line supervision is not executive work. Say also who performs the tasks the applicant will not, since that is what makes a managerial account credible. A description that lists significant decisions but leaves the routine work unaccounted for reads as incomplete, and the obvious inference is that the person does it. Naming the team, the contractors or the systems that absorb it costs two sentences and closes the point.
Rank the three elements and act on the weakest
Close the first meeting by ranking the three elements from strongest to weakest and assigning the next task to whoever holds the evidence. A new-office plan changes the analysis again, because the position must be supportable as managerial or executive within one year and the initial approval period is limited to one year. Agree what the employer will produce, what counsel must assess, and what would make the household pause a relocation plan. Where the receiving entity is new, note that the initial approval period is limited to one year and that the extension will be assessed against what the business actually did during it. That makes the first year an evidence-gathering exercise as well as a trading one, so decide at the outset who keeps the record of hiring, premises and the transferee's actual duties.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.