Read the general business expansion overview
Hypothetical example: Jean-Philippe founded a sanitary process-piping fabrication shop near Saint-Lucien four years ago, welding stainless lines for dairies and food plants. He now wants to open a first American shop and transfer himself into it. For the first two years he took no salary and invoiced the company through a personal management corporation. That arrangement, chosen for entirely ordinary tax reasons, is the thing most likely to complicate his petition, because the requirement is not about running a company but about being employed by one.
The year is counted backwards, and it has to be employment
The requirement is one continuous year of qualifying employment with the foreign entity within the three years immediately before the petition, in a managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge role. Two features of that sentence do the work. The year is measured backwards from the filing, so employment from five years ago does not help if the recent record is thin. And it must be employment with the entity, which is why an owner who has invoiced his own company through a separate corporation may find that the relationship on paper is one of service provider to client rather than employee to employer. The distinction is invisible commercially and decisive here.
Being the owner and the employee at the same time
Nothing prevents a shareholder from also being an employee, and many transfers involve exactly that. What is needed is a record that shows the employment separately from the ownership: an employment agreement, a directors’ resolution appointing him to the role and fixing remuneration, payroll registers and the corresponding annual slips, and job descriptions that match what he actually does. Where two of the last four years were invoiced rather than salaried, the practical answer is usually to put a proper employment relationship in place and let it run long enough to satisfy the requirement before filing. That is a delay, but it is a delay with a defined end.
What the first year of a new office is actually for
Where the American entity has been doing business for less than a year, an approved petition is approved for one year initially. That period is not a probationary formality; it is when the evidence for the extension is created. Premises have to be occupied rather than optioned, employees hired rather than planned, payroll run and customers invoiced. The extension request is judged against what the plan said would happen. A shop that spent the year as a leased empty bay with one person in it will struggle, and the honest response to that risk is a smaller, fully funded plan rather than an ambitious one that cannot be evidenced twelve months later.
What else is on your mind?
Does being a business owner or director qualify me for L-1A?What employment history should an L-1 transfer review cover?What makes a new-office L-1A case different?Why does an L-2 spouse’s admission record matter for work?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.