Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Explain decision authority within the matrix
Identify the essential function, the applicant’s senior role, discretion and responsibilities. Describe who performs its operational work and who resolves resource or priority conflicts. A dotted line on a chart does not itself establish or defeat managerial capacity. The proposed U.S. role must be primarily managerial or executive; routinely doing the function’s work is different from managing it.
Document the transfer foundation separately
Qualifying parent, subsidiary, affiliate or branch organizations must continue doing business in the United States and another country. Establish the required continuous full-time foreign-employment year within the relevant three-year period. In an ordinary L-1A case, the foreign qualifying employment can be managerial, executive or specialized knowledge; the proposed U.S. capacity needs its own managerial or executive showing.
Apply the new-office conditions when relevant
For a qualifying new U.S. office, the foreign year must specifically be managerial or executive. Show sufficient premises and a plan demonstrating that the operation will support the U.S. managerial or executive position within one year of approval. Initial new-office approval is at most one year; ordinary individual initial approval may be up to three years, with the general L-1A maximum of seven years subject to applicable counting rules. Owner or major-stockholder cases also need appropriate temporary-services and subsequent foreign-assignment evidence. A new office means the qualifying U.S. organization has been doing business for less than one year.
Managerial duties are about what the person directs
A production manager who supervises fourteen people, sets shift schedules, approves purchases and disciplines staff is doing managerial work. Executive duties involve directing management, setting goals and policies, and exercising wide latitude in discretionary decision-making. Where an employee primarily supervises staff who are neither professional nor themselves supervisory, the statute treats that person as a first-line supervisor rather than a manager, unless the employees supervised are professionals. Record US travel separately because those days do not count, although qualifying brief trips do not themselves break continuity. Create a decision inventory showing who sets policies, controls budgets, directs managers, and handles routine work. Use calendars, approval records, budgets, delegation instruments, and descriptions of subordinate functions to show how authority operates. Match the business plan, budget, hiring sequence, and service contracts to the point at which the transferee will direct managers, professionals, or a managed function. If nobody does, that is an honest finding and it changes the analysis: a transferee who will personally perform the function is not managing it, however senior the title on the door.
Address a newly established operation
If the U.S. operation would be newly established, address secured premises and a credible plan for supporting a managerial or executive role within one year, and keep the actual results for the later extension filing. The qualifying relationship for an intracompany transfer may be parent and subsidiary, a branch, or an affiliate, and affiliation includes two entities owned and controlled by the same group of individuals in approximately the same proportion. Sign the facility lease second, because a new-office petition needs secured physical premises, not a letter of intent. L-1A requires primarily managerial or executive work; first-line supervision of nonprofessional workers is insufficient by title alone.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.