Read the general business expansion overview
Hypothetical example: Damien bottles maple syrup under private label for retailers from a plant near Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham and is opening a packing site in the United States to serve customers there directly. He intends to run it himself for the first while. Because the American company will have been doing business for less than a year, the petition is treated as a new office and, if approved, is approved for one year. Everything about the plan should be arranged around what will be provable twelve months later.
Premises secured, not premises identified
A new-office petition has to show that sufficient physical premises have been secured for the operation. That means an executed lease or purchase, with a term, an address and a rent, rather than a letter of intent, a listing or a description of what is being looked for. For a packing operation the file is stronger where it also shows what will fill the space: quotations or purchase orders for the filling and labelling line, utility connections arranged, and any food-handling registrations applied for. These are things Damien would organise anyway, and dating them before the filing costs nothing extra. Anything dated after the petition goes in is evidence for the extension rather than for the petition itself.
The business plan is judged on whether it supports the role
The question is not whether the venture is attractive but whether within one year the American entity will support a managerial or executive position, or a specialized-knowledge one, rather than a person doing all the work himself. That points at hiring: how many staff, in what roles, on what timetable, funded from what. A plan showing a plant manager, a line supervisor and shift staff recruited over the first two quarters makes the second-year description credible. A plan in which Damien is still bottling, driving and invoicing at month eleven will not, whatever the revenue looks like. The hiring timetable should therefore be written as dates and headcounts rather than as intentions.
The extension is decided on what happened, not on what was planned
At the end of the first year the extension request is judged against reality: the staff actually hired, the trading actually done, the premises actually used, and the duties the transferee actually performs. That is why the plan should be written as a set of commitments someone will check rather than as a pitch. Keep the evidence as it accumulates, including payroll registers, contracts, photographs of the fitted premises and an organizational chart with real names. Assembling it retrospectively in month eleven is where an otherwise successful first year becomes a difficult application. A short monthly note recording what changed is enough, provided somebody is given the job of writing it.
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.