Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Prove the relationship on paper
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. Family involvement, shared surnames and informal cooperation prove nothing. Where individuals own both companies, the proportions held by each person must be set out, because affiliate status through common individual ownership depends on the same persons owning and controlling both entities in substantially the same proportions. Do not infer control from family relationships. Reconcile minute books, share registers, trust instruments, and voting agreements against the chart. The review should flag any ownership change that occurred after the foreign employment started, because it can alter whether the entities remained qualifying organizations.
Describe executive capacity precisely
Executive capacity means directing the management of the organization or a major component, setting goals and policies, exercising wide latitude in discretionary decision-making, and receiving only general supervision from higher-level executives, the board or shareholders. It is not the same as personnel management, and it does not require a long list of direct reports. A president who sets the capital plan, approves grain contracts and hires the operations manager is describing executive work; the same person driving a truck in September and calling it executive is not. An executive file is strongest when it distinguishes authority from activity. Board resolutions, budget approvals, delegated signing limits and reports from department leads show decisions that others carry out. A weekly task log that mainly records hands-on production points in the opposite direction.
Establish that both businesses trade
Both entities must be doing business, meaning the regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services, not merely holding assets or existing as a registered company. For a farm corporation that is milk cheques, crop sales, input invoices and payroll; for the US company, storage contracts, drying receipts, bank activity and tax filings. If one of the two exists mainly to hold land or equipment, that has to be confronted, because a dormant entity on either side of the relationship undermines the petition regardless of how genuine the family enterprise is. Test operating reality separately for each entity. Recent invoices, payroll, bank activity and customer agreements show regular commerce; a land title, incorporation certificate or equipment list alone does not. This distinction determines whether a corporate relationship has a functioning business on both sides.
Confirm the qualifying year and plan the maximum
The transferee needs one continuous year of qualifying employment with the organization abroad within the three years before the petition, and in a family corporation the evidence is payroll and tax slips rather than an employment contract that may never have been written. Time in this classification is limited to seven years in total. A family that intends the American operation to be permanent should be thinking, from the beginning, about what happens at the end of that period rather than discovering the limit in year six. Build the transfer calendar around evidence dates, not a hoped-for move date. Confirm when payroll, tax material and corporate approvals will be available, then allow time to answer a request for additional evidence. Starting productive duties before authorization creates a problem that later paperwork cannot repair.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.