Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Show who actually performs operational work
L-1A requires primarily managerial or executive capacity with an accurate account of supporting resources. Identify staff, service providers and the applicant’s actual authority. First-line supervision of nonprofessional workers is insufficient by title alone. A service contract should not be relabelled as an employment relationship simply to enlarge the organizational chart. Start with payroll, contracts, role descriptions and reporting lines, then test whether they describe the same operating reality. The record should show which people make recommendations, approve spending, schedule work or handle daily production. That comparison often reveals a mismatch between a managerial title and hands-on duties. The company must decide whether the proposed US job is genuinely managerial or executive, or whether its evidence instead describes a skilled operating role that needs a different analysis.
Prove the qualifying organizations and foreign service
Establish a continuous qualifying foreign year within the relevant three years, excluding US days without assuming every trip breaks continuity. The qualifying foreign service may generally have been managerial, executive or in specialized knowledge, but a new-office L-1A petition needs that foreign employment to have been managerial or executive. Qualifying entities need the proper relationship and regular, systematic, continuous US and foreign business. A US new office doing business under one year requires sufficient premises and support for the qualifying role within a year, with initial approval limited to one year. The filing record should separately trace ownership, foreign employment dates, business activity and the intended US role. L-1 requires one qualifying year abroad during the three years before the petition; L-1A stay is limited to seven years, while L-1B stay is limited to five years. For a new office, premises, projected staffing and operational funding should be reviewed together, because a lease by itself does not demonstrate that the role can become managerial within the initial year.
Managing people and managing a function are different claims
The Canadian subsidiary and the U.S. plant must be linked as parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, and both must be doing business. Executive capacity primarily involves directing management of the organization or a major component or function, establishing its goals and policies, exercising wide discretionary latitude and receiving only general higher-level supervision. The U.S. position should reveal who the transferee will supervise, what level of authority they hold, which budgets or functions they direct, and how operational work will be performed by others. Managing people means directing subordinate supervisors or professional staff, with authority over hiring, firing and their day-to-day direction. Break the proposed week into hours and sort them: hiring and firing decisions, budget authority, setting production policy, and directing supervisors go on one side; running the press, fixing tooling, and covering shifts go on the other. Brief trips into the country do not usually destroy continuity, but time spent working in the United States is not counted toward the year, and it lengthens the period over which the year has to be found. A manager of an essential function needs evidence of real discretion over that function, not merely responsibility for completing technical tasks.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.