Read the general business expansion overview
Registering a U.S. entity and flying in to meet suppliers are preparatory steps. Neither starts the clock on doing business, and neither is qualifying employment. A new-office L-1 petition turns on what the organization has genuinely begun and on a year the beneficiary already worked abroad, so the trips belong in the narrative as context and nowhere else in the analysis.
Describe what business has actually begun
Hypothetical example: a Niagara Falls precision-fabrication company incorporates in Ohio, rents a mailbox address, and sends a director across six times over eight months to meet distributors before anyone is assigned. Doing business, for L purposes, means the regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services — not the mere presence of an agent, an office address or a certificate of incorporation. Say plainly what has started: contracts signed, goods delivered, staff engaged, premises leased. Then evidence the qualifying relationship between the two entities with ownership and control documents rather than an organizational chart drawn for the petition. If the honest position is that nothing has begun, that is precisely why the new-office provisions exist, and the case should be built as a launch instead of dressed up as an operating business.
Meet the launch conditions that attach to each category
A new-office petition needs premises secured and sufficient for the proposed operation, and it is approved for one year rather than the usual three, with any extension tested against what that year actually produced. For L-1A the petitioner must additionally establish the beneficiary’s qualifying managerial or executive employment abroad and show that the U.S. entity will support a primarily managerial or executive role within the first year — ordinarily through a hiring plan, a budget and revenue expectations an officer can trace. For L-1B the question is a different one: whether the beneficiary holds knowledge of this petitioner’s own product, service, research, equipment, techniques or management that is special or advanced rather than widely held across the industry, and whether the petitioner can pay the wage and commence business. The L-1A management standard is not imported into L-1B.
Use genuine employment and business dates
The qualifying year is the detail that preparatory travel most often damages. One continuous year of full-time employment abroad must fall inside the three years preceding the petition, with a qualifying entity that is itself actively doing business, alongside a U.S. entity standing in a parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate relationship to it. That foreign year may have been managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge in capacity under the ordinary L rule, while the proposed U.S. position is tested separately against its own category. Occasional short trips into the United States do not necessarily break continuity, but time worked in the United States is not foreign employment merely because the payroll stayed abroad — those days are subtracted, and a director who has been shuttling for most of a year can find the qualifying twelve months no longer intact. New-office treatment applies where the U.S. entity has been doing business for less than a year; count the year backwards from the intended filing date and, if it falls short, wait rather than file. L-1A time is capped at seven years overall and L-1B at five.
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.