Ownership can help explain the corporate relationship, but the qualifying foreign employment, the businesses' actual operations, and the proposed managerial or executive role still all need to be independently established.
Separate the owner's role from the proposed worker's role
Describe specifically what the applicant would do after the transfer and who or what they would be directing. Identify who actually performs the routine service or production work at each entity. Where several family members or holding entities are involved, have counsel assess control from the actual corporate records rather than a summary chart, since the chart is only a starting explanation.
Assess L-1A through the organizations, the past role, and the intended role in that order. The record must show a qualifying corporate relationship and one uninterrupted qualifying year abroad during the three years immediately before transfer. Then test whether the U.S. job is chiefly managerial or executive: authority over people, a function, or major decisions matters more than a director title. Hypothetical example: a museum-exhibit fabrication company wants to transfer its production chief to oversee a U.S. shop. The decisive records are ownership documents, the foreign payroll history, and an organization chart showing who will perform fabrication while she controls schedules, budgets, and hiring. If she will personally build most exhibits, the case needs a candid reassessment. A new office has only an initial one-year approval period. The total L-1A stay ceiling is seven years, so the intended duration must fit the classification rather than assume indefinite renewals.