Read the general pathway comparison overview
A Stony Plain specialist may be offered work after an acquisition or by another business with the same investors. Identify the employer and actual ownership facts before assuming that L-1 and E-2 employee routes ask the same structural question.
Establish the transfer facts
Settle who the employer is before comparing routes. An L-1 transfer requires a qualifying relationship between the entity abroad and the U.S. entity — parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate — with both actively doing business, in the United States and in at least one other country. It also requires twelve unbroken months of full-time qualifying employment abroad with a related entity, within the preceding three-year period. The year is built abroad: U.S. days do not add to it, though short trips do not end it. Managerial, executive and specialized-knowledge employment all count toward the year abroad, but the U.S. assignment must match the category applied for. Where an acquisition has taken place, the date affiliation became effective is a legal fact evidenced by the closing documents, not by a press release, and employment with a company before it joined the group does not automatically count toward the qualifying year.
Evaluate an E-2 employee proposal separately
The E-2 employee route asks a different structural question and should be assessed on its own. The employing enterprise must itself be a treaty business, ordinarily at least half owned by treaty-country nationals, and the employee must share the employer’s treaty nationality and be coming to fill an executive or supervisory role, or one requiring skills essential to the enterprise’s operations. That essential-skills test is not the L-1B specialized-knowledge test wearing a different name: they are separate standards resting on separate evidence, and a description drafted for one will not carry the other. Common investors standing behind two companies do not by themselves make those companies affiliates for L-1 purposes, nor do they make either of them a treaty enterprise for E-2 purposes. Identify the actual employing entity, its ownership by nationality, and the role as it will really be performed rather than as the offer letter summarises it.
Identify when the proposal is investment instead
If the plan is to acquire the business rather than be employed by it, switch to the investor conditions instead of stretching the employee test. The applicant must hold treaty-country nationality personally, and treaty nationals must own at least half the enterprise; Canada is a treaty country for this purpose. The investor has to develop and direct: majority ownership, or actual control of operations. Lawful source, irrevocable commitment, real exposure to loss and substantiality relative to this business’s cost are all required, and no statutory minimum exists. The enterprise must be real, operating and never merely marginal, which means it must yield more than a minimal living for the investor and family or else make a significant economic contribution, and where that capacity is forecast it should materialize within roughly five years of ordinary trading. Intent to depart when E-2 status ends is still needed. Hypothetical example: a Stony Plain instrumentation technician is offered work by an American company that shares two shareholders with her Canadian employer, and is separately offered the chance to buy into it. Shared shareholders do not by themselves create the corporate relationship L-1 needs — affiliation requires the same individuals to own and control approximately the same proportion of each entity, which is a fact to evidence rather than assume; buying in would move the case to the investor conditions, where a professional fee paid at closing is not, on its own, permission to begin work.
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?How should an owner compare L-1 and E-2?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
- Department of State — treaty investors
- Department of State — 9 FAM 402.9