L-1 Visa
Intra-Company Transferee

As an employee of a company abroad, the intra-company transferee is to be transferred to a U.S. affiliate, parent, or subsidiary entity on a temporary work basis.  In order to be eligible, the employee must have worked for the company abroad for one continuous year out of the preceding three years.  The employee must be coming to the U.S. in order to continue working for the same employer or the affiliate, subsidiary, or parent company.

Further, the employee must be offered a position in the U.S. as either a “Manager,” “Executive” (collectively referred to as L-1A), or a person with “Specialized Knowledge” (L-1B), which is narrowly defined for L-1 visa purposes.  .

The qualifying L-1A Manager must:

1.  Personally manage the organization, department, subdivision, or function or component;
2.  Supervise and control work of other supervisory, professional, or managerial employees OR manage an essential function within the organization, department, or subdivision;  
3.  Have authority to hire and fire or recommend personnel actions or, if there is no direct personnel supervision, function at a senior level and exercise discretion over day-to-day operations of the activity or function.

The qualifying L-1A Executive must:

1.   Direct the management of an organization or a major component or function of an organization as primary duties;
2.   Establish organizational goals and policies, exercise wide latitude of discretionary decision-making;
3.  Receive only general supervision or direction from higher-level executives, the board of directors, or shareholders of the company;
4.  The executive must supervise the work of others or supervise a function. 

A person in L-1A managerial or executive capacity can remain in the U.S. for up to seven years.  

The L-1B Person with Specialized Knowledge within the organization must:

1.  Have “special” knowledge of the company product and its application in international markets; or
2.  Have an “advanced” level of knowledge of the processes and procedures of the company.  A person with merely one year of experience with the foreign company is not likely to qualify for this category.   

An L-1B worker in the specialized knowledge category can only remain up to 5 years in the United States. 

Moreover, it is necessary to document both the existence of the two business entities (U.S. company and foreign) and the “qualifying relationship” between the foreign and U.S. companies.  The “qualifying relationship” between the foreign and U.S. companies means that the relationship is either one of parent, subsidiary or affiliate.  While the L-1 can be used for new companies, those L-1s will only be granted for one year initially.  

L-2 is for the spouse or children of an L-1 visa holder.  L-2 spouses are eligible to apply for employment authorization.  L-2 holders are allowed to attend schools while maintaining their L-2 status. 

Blanket L-1 Petition

A blanket L-1 petition may be sought for certain eligible commercial organizations.  It enables a petitioning multinational corporation to transfer managers, executives, and specialized-knowledge professionals to the U.S. on work assignment under a single, blanket petition.  As such, it eliminates the need for the multinational corporation to separately petition for each employee assigned to work in the United States.  The L-1 employee must have worked for the company abroad for one continuous year out of the preceding three years.  The work must have been performed in the three years immediately preceding entry to the United States.  Blanket petitions are essentially available only to larger corporations.  All others must use the individual petition.

The approved Blanket L-1 petition will be valid for three years and may be extended indefinitely for qualifying organizations.