IN THIS GUIDE · Interrogate your own corporate records before anyone drafts a petition
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Question the relationship you think you have
Ask the corporate lawyer or the accountant, not the operations manager, what relationship exists between the two organisations on paper. Parent and subsidiary, branch, or affiliates under common ownership and control are the qualifying forms, and long collaboration is not one of them. Request the actual share register, articles, or partnership documents rather than an organisational chart. Industrial service groups often share a founder, a brand and a customer base while remaining legally unconnected, and discovering that at the drafting stage costs months that could have been spent restructuring. Put the ownership chart beside the incorporation records and reconcile every percentage. An informal understanding between founders is not the qualifying relationship. If a parent, affiliate, branch, or subsidiary is claimed, the corporate documents should demonstrate that label without inference.
Question the qualifying year against payroll
The requirement is one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the three years before the petition, and the way to check it is to pull the payroll rather than to ask the employee. Ask whether any period was invoiced as contract work, whether a seasonal shutdown created a gap, and whether an internal transfer moved the person onto a related company's payroll. Ask whether any of that time was spent working in the United States, which does not count toward the foreign year. Each of these is common in industrial services and each can break a year that looked continuous. Build a month-by-month payroll timeline for the three-year lookback. Pay slips, tax records, leave records, and employment agreements can settle whether the required year was continuous; recollection from a supervisor cannot repair a break or an unrelated paying employer.
Question whether the role is managerial in practice
Ask who reports to the transferee, which decisions they make without approval, what budget or function they control, and how much of an ordinary week is spent doing technical work personally. A reliability manager who spends most of the week on the floor solving equipment problems is doing valuable work that does not fit the managerial description. It is better to hear that from a colleague now than from an adjudicator later. If the honest answer is that the role is technical, consider whether the specialized-knowledge classification fits the facts better. Test the senior title against a calendar of actual work. A manager normally directs people or an essential function with real discretion; an executive normally directs the organisation or a major component. A job description that mainly lists hands-on production is a warning to resolve before filing.
Question the limits before building around them
Ask what happens at the end. The managerial classification carries a seven-year maximum, a newly established operation is normally approved for a first year with evidence of premises and capacity, and continuation depends on what the operation actually becomes. If the transferee will spend substantial time at customers' mills, ask who directs that work; the petitioner must retain control, and an arrangement that amounts to supplying labour for hire to another business sits outside what the classification contemplates. L-2 spouses are employment-authorised incident to status; dependent children are not. Treat the seven-year maximum as a planning boundary, not a renewal strategy. A new office also has to show that it can support the position after its initial period. Financial forecasts, premises records, and staffing plans should describe a credible operation rather than a hoped-for promotion.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.