Read the general pathway comparison overview
Owning a business and completing qualifying employment are different facts. Explain the founder’s individual history alongside the investment and corporate structure before comparing transfer and investor routes.
Build the employment account from actual work
Build the employment history from what the founder personally did, month by month. The L route asks for one continuous full-time year of qualifying employment with the group outside the United States within the three years before the petition, a qualifying relationship between the two entities, and duties in the United States that fit the category claimed. Incorporation documents establish when the company came into existence and who owns it; they say nothing about when the founder began working for it, in what role, from where, or for how many hours. Payroll records, remittance filings, engagement letters and contemporaneous correspondence do that work. Keep the founder’s actual dates, duties and locations intact even where they are shorter or less tidy than the company’s history.
Assess the investment proposal separately
Assess the investment proposal as a separate case rather than as a fallback. E-2 asks for the applicant’s treaty nationality, ownership of the enterprise by nationals of that treaty country, capital that is substantial, lawfully sourced, committed and genuinely at risk, a business that is real and more than marginal, and development and direction by the applicant. A weak employment history does not make any of that easier to establish. Describe the money as it exists — where it came from, how it travelled, what it has been spent on and what remains contingent — together with the rights the applicant will hold and the operations the business actually carries on.
Compare the remaining evidence gaps honestly
Hypothetical example: the company was incorporated eleven years ago by a passive shareholder, and the founder began drawing a salary and directing operations only eight months before the proposed transfer. Eleven years belong to the company; eight months belong to the individual, and only the individual’s record answers the question the L route asks. Where the applicant is an owner or major stockholder, the file must also address the temporary nature of the proposed United States service and the assignment abroad that is to follow it. A comparison worth writing names the gap plainly instead of borrowing history from the corporate record. The requirements against which that record is measured are fixed. The L route counts one continuous full-time year of qualifying employment with the group outside the United States within the three preceding years — the individual’s year, not the company’s age. The capacity of that year may be managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge, and the United States assignment must independently meet the test for the category it claims. Trips into the United States during the year do not automatically break continuity, yet those days cannot be counted toward the year itself. The E-2 route looks past the founder to the ownership of the enterprise: at least half must be held by nationals of the treaty country for the business to carry that nationality, and the founder must develop and direct it through half or more of the equity or another real form of operational control. The business must not be marginal; it has to be capable of more than a minimal living for the founder and dependants, or of a significant economic contribution, and prospective capacity should ordinarily be achieved within five years of normal operation.
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?How should an owner compare L-1 and E-2?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.