Only if control can be established, not merely equal ownership. An affiliate relationship depends on the same person or entity owning and controlling both companies, so a venture split evenly with an unrelated American family usually fails unless a shareholders agreement or other instrument gives the Canadian side actual control.
Equal ownership is not the same fact as common control
Hypothetical example: Camille is vice-president of operations at a Wickham corrugated-packaging converter that has entered a fifty-fifty venture with an American family firm to run a plant in the United States. The qualifying relationship for L purposes must be one of parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, and each of those turns on ownership together with control. A half share held against another half share held by strangers gives neither side control by default, so the venture is not automatically an affiliate of the Wickham company.
What can rescue it is documentary: a shareholders agreement conferring management control, casting votes, or veto rights over the matters that decide how the business is run. Those instruments have to exist and be produced, not be described in a covering letter. Both companies must also be doing business, and Camille still needs one continuous year of qualifying employment with the Wickham company within the three years before filing.
Structuring the venture with the immigration test in mind is far cheaper before signature than after.
- USCIS: L-1A intracompany transferee executive or manager
- USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 2 Part L: intracompany transferees
- USCIS: L classification documentation and evidence
- eCFR: 8 CFR 214.2(l), intracompany transferees
- Department of State: 9 FAM 402.12, intracompany transferees
- USCIS: Form G-1055, fee schedule