Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Explain authority and underlying tasks
Identify the actual decisions, staff or function and who carries out operations. L-1A requires primarily managerial or executive duties; a first-line supervisor of nonprofessional workers does not qualify by title alone. A spending limit is one fact in the role, not a complete classification.
Complete the qualifying transfer
Prove the corporate relationship and continuous qualifying foreign employment year within the relevant three-year period. The qualifying group must continue US and foreign business. A new office needs sufficient premises and support for the qualifying role within one year; initial approval is limited to one year. Use actual support rather than an ideal organization chart.
Employment days and actual business activity
US days do not count toward the qualifying foreign employment year; a trip does not automatically break continuity. The qualifying organization must provide goods or services regularly, systematically and continuously in the United States and at least one other country. New-office treatment concerns actual US doing business for less than one year, rather than incorporation alone.
Hypothetical example: a function manager with no staff
Hypothetical example: a Langford landscape-construction company employs an estimating and procurement lead who has no direct reports but sets bid strategy, approves supplier terms and decides which projects the company pursues. The company wants to transfer her to run the same function for a new US subsidiary. Function-manager L-1A requires that the function be essential to the organization, that she manage it at a senior level and that she not primarily perform the day-to-day estimating herself. What goes wrong is a description that lists her tasks as measuring drawings and pricing materials, which is performing the function. The petition should instead show who prepares takeoffs, who she directs, what discretion she exercises over pricing policy and how her decisions bind the company. The organizational chart should show the function, its staff or contractors, and her position above them. Her one continuous year in the Canadian company within the last three years still has to be documented separately.
Prove the function through decisions and delegation
The decisive records are the job description as it operated abroad, evidence of decisions she actually made, such as signed supplier agreements and bid approvals, and the US business plan showing the function she will manage. New-office petitions are approved for one year, and the extension will test whether the function and its staff exist. Seven years is the overall L-1A ceiling. Sequence the transfer so that US estimators or contractors are in place early, because a manager with nobody to direct and nothing to delegate risks being read as the person doing the work.
Document the qualifying organization and foreign year
Parent and subsidiary, branch, or affiliates under common ownership and control are the qualifying forms, and long collaboration is not one of them. A personnel manager supervises other supervisors or professional employees and controls hiring, firing and performance. Exclude time spent in the US, while recognizing that qualifying brief trips do not themselves interrupt continuity. Owner or major-stockholder cases also require applicable temporary-service and subsequent foreign-assignment evidence. Executive capacity means directing the management of the organization or a major component, setting goals and policies, and operating under only general supervision.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.