Read the general business expansion overview
A Devon group may have registered a U.S. entity well before it began providing services. The L-1 new-office analysis should identify the actual period of doing business rather than assume the oldest corporate document settles the issue.
Identify the activity behind each date
Build a single dated line for the U.S. entity and put each event on it: the date of incorporation, the date any registration or tax account opened, the date premises were first secured, the date of the first employee, and the date of the first invoice a customer actually paid. Those are five different facts and they routinely fall in different years. New-office treatment attaches where the qualifying U.S. organization has been doing business — providing goods or services regularly and systematically — for less than a year; it is neither triggered nor avoided by the date on the incorporation certificate. Do not manufacture transactions to make a dormant stretch look active, and do not treat the arrival of a large new customer as the birth of a new company when the entity has been trading throughout. Where the record genuinely is a new office, that is a category with its own evidence, not a weakness to disguise.
Connect the applicant to the qualifying group
The group relationship and the foreign year have to be proved as facts, not asserted. There must be a qualifying tie between the foreign employer and the U.S. entity — parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate — with both actually carrying on regular, systematic business, in the United States and in at least one other country. The beneficiary must have spent one continuous year in full-time qualifying employment with that group somewhere abroad, and that year has to fall inside the three years immediately before the petition. Abroad, the year may have been managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge work; it is the U.S. job that has to match whichever classification is being requested. Days spent inside the United States do not count toward the foreign year, though short trips do not by themselves interrupt it. Where the U.S. entity went quiet between registration and its first customer, say so and explain what the company was doing, because a single early invoice proves continuing business no better than a certificate of incorporation does.
Apply the role-specific new-office evidence
Then apply the showing that belongs to the category requested. An L-1A beneficiary must be coming to work primarily in a managerial or executive capacity. Where the U.S. office has been doing qualifying business for under a year, the new-office rules attach: the foreign year must itself have been managerial or executive, sufficient physical premises must have been secured, and the petitioner must show the operation will be able to support a managerial or executive role within a year of approval. That first approval runs for one year and no longer. If the beneficiary owns or controls the company, the file also has to address that the U.S. services are temporary and that an assignment abroad follows. An L-1B new office instead turns on specialized knowledge of the petitioner’s own product, process or procedures rather than skill that is merely strong, together with sufficient premises and the financial capacity to pay the beneficiary and start trading. Hypothetical example: a Devon engineering-services group registers a U.S. entity, then leaves it dormant for two years while a Canadian subsidiary serves its American customers. The clock that matters for the new-office rules starts when the U.S. entity itself began doing business, not on the incorporation date, and the dormancy should be described rather than papered over. Overall stay is capped at seven years in L-1A and five in L-1B.
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: 2026-09-08. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.
- USCIS — L classification documentation and evidence
- Department of State — 9 FAM 402.12
- USCIS — employment authorization for certain spouses
- ICE — nonimmigrant classes that may study
- USCIS — fee schedule
- L definitions, foreign employment and new-office evidence
- 8 USC 1184 — specialized knowledge definition
- L1B specialized knowledge and offsite placement statute