IN THIS GUIDE · L-1A from Saint-Cyrille-de-Wendover: prove the corporate link, then prove the management
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Four permitted relationships, and no fifth
The relationship must be one of parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, and the petition has to demonstrate it with corporate documents rather than describe it in a covering letter. A branch is the same legal entity operating in another country. A subsidiary is owned and controlled by the petitioner or its parent. Affiliates are entities under common control, which is what usually applies when a family holding company sits above two operating businesses. Shared customers, shared branding, a joint venture with an unrelated partner, or a long supply relationship create nothing for L purposes. Both entities must also be doing business, understood as the regular and continuous provision of goods or services; an American company incorporated last quarter that has invoiced nobody is a new office, which is a different filing with its own evidence and a one-year initial approval.
Counting the year abroad correctly
The requirement is one continuous year of full-time qualifying employment with the related foreign entity, completed within the three years preceding the petition. Two details cause most of the trouble. The year must be continuous, so a long unpaid leave or a resignation and rehire can break it, even though the total service adds up to far more than twelve months. And the employment must be with the qualifying organization: years spent invoicing that same company through a personal management corporation are frequently disputed, because the person was arguably not its employee. Time already spent working inside the United States for the same group does not usually count toward the foreign year, since the requirement is service abroad. Assemble payroll records, T4 slips and dated employment letters rather than relying on a résumé.
What managerial and executive actually mean here
L-1A is not for the most senior person in a small company by default. Managerial capacity ordinarily means managing the organization, a department, or a function, with authority over supervisory or professional staff, or managing an essential function at a senior level. Executive capacity means directing the management of the organization, setting goals and policies, and operating with wide latitude. Adjudicators test this against the organizational chart and the headcount: if the transferee will spend most of the week doing the operational work personally because there is nobody else to do it, the petition is vulnerable however genuine the title. State who reports to whom, how many people are employed, and which decisions the transferee makes alone. A first-line supervisor of non-professional workers is generally not managerial for this purpose.
Duration, family and the ceiling
An ordinary L-1A may be granted in increments up to a maximum of seven years; a new-office petition is approved for one year initially and must then be extended on evidence of what the office has become. Time spent physically outside the United States can generally be recaptured with travel records, which is worth tracking from the first day rather than reconstructing at the end. The spouse of an L-1 principal is employment-authorized incident to L-2 status, so an L-2 spouse may work without a separate sponsor, though a licensed occupation still requires the state licence itself. Children travel as derivatives for as long as they remain unmarried and under 21, and school enrolment is open to them. A child who reaches 21 during the posting falls outside the derivative definition, which is a date worth putting in the calendar at the outset.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.