Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Date the qualifying employment precisely
The year the rule asks for is a year of employment with the qualifying organization, and a period spent providing services through a personal corporation is, on its face, a contractual relationship rather than employment. Establish the actual start date from payroll records, the employment agreement, tax slips and source deductions, and count forward from there. If the employment began in month six, the year completes in month eighteen, and filing before that date invites a refusal on a point that patience alone would have solved.
Look at the whole three-year window
The continuous year need not be the most recent twelve months; it must fall within the three years immediately before the petition. A manager who worked for the same group earlier in his career, in Canada or in another country, may already have a qualifying year inside that window, and periods with a parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate can count where the relationship existed at the time. Reconstruct the whole three years from records before concluding that the clock has to start now, and document any earlier qualifying period as carefully as a recent one.
Describe the managerial role as it will be
The transferee must be employed primarily in a managerial or executive capacity in the United States. 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. Provide the American organizational chart with names and positions, the staff each supervisor directs, and the decisions the transferee will own. Where the subsidiary is small, an essential-function theory may fit better than a personnel-management one, but it has to be described honestly and supported by what the operation actually looks like.
Confirm the corporate side and the limit
There must be a qualifying relationship between the entities, evidenced by ownership documents, and both must be doing business rather than merely existing. Total time in the executive or managerial classification is limited to seven years, and prior time in L or H classification generally counts. A company that expects this manager to run the American plant for the long term should raise, at the outset, what the plan is when that period ends, since the options narrow considerably if the question is first asked in the sixth year. Map the corporate relationship and the role separately. Share certificates, registers, and organization charts establish whether the entities qualify; payroll records and reporting lines establish what the transferee actually did. The one qualifying year must fall in the three years before the filing event, and an L-1A stay has a seven-year ceiling. Treat those dates as a planning constraint, not a detail to repair after an assignment is announced.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.