Read the general business expansion overview
A launch deck usually shows two kinds of relationship on the same slide: companies the applicant’s employer owns or is owned by, and companies it merely trades with. Only the first kind can support this transfer. Before counting a single year of group history, draw the ownership lines and see which boxes actually sit inside the group. This worksheet does that first, then applies the new-office rules to whatever is genuinely there.
Map legal entities before counting group history
Hypothetical example: a Grimsby fruit-processing company opens a U.S. sales arm and lists, on the same page, its new Delaware subsidiary and a long-standing American co-packer it has used for a decade. The co-packer is a customer or a contractor. It is not an affiliate, and a supply agreement, however old and however exclusive, does not create the parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate relationship this classification requires. Prove the relationship the way ownership is genuinely proved, through share registers, incorporation documents and evidence of who controls whom. Then note what the chart cannot tell you. The individual’s own qualifying year abroad is a fact about that person’s employment, not about the age of any company on the slide, and it must be evidenced from payroll records and a description of actual duties.
Assess the real U.S. operating stage
New-office treatment applies where the U.S. entity has been doing business for less than a year, and the intended U.S. role picks the test. For L-1A, the record needs the applicant’s qualifying managerial or executive employment abroad, premises sufficient for what the sales arm will actually do, and a credible showing that within one year of approval the operation will support someone working primarily as a manager or executive. Initial approval in a new office runs for one year, so the first extension is decided on what actually happened rather than on what the deck promised. Write the plan so a reviewer can check it twelve months later: headcount by quarter, the products the U.S. entity will sell, and the revenue that entity itself expects to book under its own name.
Keep capacity and ongoing business requirements intact
If the person going down is a specialist rather than a manager, the test changes shape. L-1B asks for knowledge of this group’s own product, process or procedures, not skill any competent person in the trade would hold, and in a new office it also asks for premises sufficient for the work and evidence that the entity can pay the salary and begin trading. The foreign year has its own arithmetic: one continuous full-time year of qualifying employment inside the three years before filing, held in a managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge capacity under the ordinary L rule, with the proposed U.S. assignment judged separately against its own category. Occasional trips south do not automatically break that year, but days spent in the United States are not added to it. Two further points are easy to forget. Both sides of the group must keep doing business, so closing the Canadian operation once the American one opens defeats the classification. And where the transferee is an owner or major stockholder, the file also needs evidence that the U.S. service is temporary and that a foreign assignment follows it. A certificate of incorporation is the beginning of this file, not the end of 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.