IN THIS GUIDE · Compare the managerial description with the applicant’s actual work
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Describe the real distribution of responsibilities
Hypothetical example: a founder has a managerial description but personally completes much of the customer delivery. Identify the actual principal duties and the support performing operational work. Do not convert hands-on activity into management merely by changing its label.
Explain authority and organizational support
Show actual decision scope, reporting and resources. A function-manager case needs the essential function, senior-level authority and who performs its operations. There is no universal headcount or fixed task-percentage rule that replaces the individual assessment.
Separate foreign history and the U.S. proposal
Generally document one continuous qualifying foreign year within the relevant preceding three years and the actual duties in the relevant period. A planned U.S. role should be described separately, with qualifying corporate relationships and continuing operations in the United States and abroad.
Assess launch assumptions explicitly
New-office L-1A requires sufficient premises, a qualifying foreign managerial or executive year and support for the U.S. managerial or executive position within one year of approval. Initial approval cannot exceed one year. Future staff are not existing support. New-office treatment applies when the U.S. organization has been doing business for less than one year; initial approval is at most one year.
Establish the qualifying foreign year and active organizations
The foreign employment generally must include one continuous qualifying year within the relevant preceding three-year period, assessed on the individual facts. U.S. days do not count toward that foreign year; a trip should not automatically be treated as breaking continuity. The qualifying organization must do business in the United States and at least one other country during the relevant period, through regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services rather than registration alone. The qualifying foreign employment must be full-time and may be managerial, executive or specialized knowledge in an ordinary petition; the proposed U.S. role must meet the requested L-1 classification.
Describe the subordinate managers’ actual authority
The petitioning entity and the foreign employer must stand as parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, and affiliation through common ownership must be shown with the registers, shareholder agreements and any trust or holding arrangements that establish it. The applicable rules require sufficient physical premises and evidence supporting the qualifying role and operation. For a plant role that means directing supervisors or managing an essential function, setting production policy, controlling hiring and budgets, rather than running a saw line. The review should end with a role map showing decisions reserved to the transferee, the personnel or function that carry out routine work, and the evidence that the US and foreign entities have the required relationship. The decisive record may be the organization chart together with payroll, job descriptions, budgets, and examples of delegated work. In a four-person subsidiary, a chief executive who also drives the delivery van and leads trips is not primarily executive. If an owner or major stockholder is involved, address the required temporary U.S. services and subsequent foreign assignment evidence. Signing authority and a spending limit describe what may be done; an executive-capacity claim rests on discretion over a major function and supervision flowing through subordinate managers.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.