Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Define each manager’s actual scope
L-1A requires primarily managerial or executive work. Explain the applicant’s own decisions, discretion and supporting resources and distinguish the other manager’s responsibilities. First-line supervision of nonprofessional staff does not qualify by title alone. Do not attribute every decision or subordinate in the function to both applicants without a truthful account of shared and separate authority. For a managerial claim, identify the function, its goals, the applicant’s authority over it, and the personnel or vendor structure that performs ordinary work. For an executive claim, identify policy-level decisions and the level of oversight. The useful record is often a reporting chart paired with budgets, delegations, calendars, and examples of decisions, rather than copied duty lists.
Establish each person’s qualifying transfer
Qualifying organizations need the proper relationship and regular, systematic, continuous US and foreign business. Each applicant needs the continuous qualifying foreign year in the relevant three years, excluding US days without treating every trip as an automatic break. General foreign capacity can be managerial, executive or specialized knowledge; new-office L-1A requires foreign managerial or executive employment. US doing business for less than a year requires sufficient new-office premises and support for the qualifying role within a year, with initial approval limited to one year. Confirm that the related foreign company remained an operating business during the qualifying employment period and reconcile payroll, travel, and corporate records. L-1A has a seven-year maximum period of stay, so a proposed extension needs an early calculation of prior L time and any potentially recapturable absences. A new-office plan also needs a credible hiring and revenue sequence, not just projected titles.
Managing people and managing a function are different claims
Document the qualifying parent, branch, affiliate or subsidiary relationship and continuing qualifying operations in the United States and abroad. Managerial duties involve managing the organisation, a department, a subdivision, a function or a component of it, directing other supervisors or professionals, or managing an essential function at a senior level. If the applicant performs hands-on work, identify it and explain who handles the remaining execution tasks. Explain what the applicant would manage in the new group, which approvals remain with the parent and who performs operational work. The qualifying organization must provide goods or services regularly, systematically and continuously in the United States and at least one other country. A promotion memo announces leadership of a function; the organisation chart filed beside it still shows the applicant reporting into a technical queue with nobody reporting out. Because the owner controls both entities, the file should demonstrate that the subsidiary has a genuine need for a manager, has staff to be managed, and can pay the offered salary. If personnel management is claimed, describe the professional or supervisory character of the subordinate positions and what those positions require of the people holding them.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.