IN THIS GUIDE · Count the qualifying year before you choose a filing date
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Measure the year backwards from the intended filing
The qualifying year is one continuous year of employment abroad with the qualifying organisation, falling inside the three years preceding the petition. A Selwyn candidate promoted into the qualifying role part-way through a period of employment may not yet have accrued it, and filing early guarantees a shortfall. Equally, a candidate who left the group and returned has a break that must be examined rather than smoothed over. Write the employment history as dated segments and mark which segment is being relied on before anyone selects a filing month.
Prove the relationship between two live entities
The petitioner and the foreign employer must stand in a qualifying relationship — parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate — and both must be doing business, not merely registered. For a company opening its first U.S. arm, the paperwork establishing the subsidiary usually needs to exist before the petition, and evidence of the Canadian company's continuing operations must be current at the same moment. A corporate structure created in the same week as the filing tends to raise the question of whether either entity was genuinely operating when the requirement had to be met.
Describe management in terms of authority, not headcount
L-1A asks whether the beneficiary's U.S. duties will be primarily managerial or executive. That is a question about what the person decides, hires, sets and controls, not about the size of the team. A director who personally performs the core commercial work of a small distribution arm is describing an operating role, whatever the title says. The stronger description names the functions supervised, the decisions reserved to the beneficiary, the budget or personnel authority held, and who performs the day-to-day tasks that the beneficiary will not.
Treat a new office as a dated one-year experiment
Where the U.S. entity is new, an approval is granted for one year and the petition must show secured premises and the capacity to support a managerial or executive role within that year. The one-year mark is a real date with a real decision behind it. A Selwyn company should therefore plan the U.S. arm's first twelve months as evidence: what will be hired, what will be sold, what will exist at month twelve. L-1A status is limited to seven years in total, and the first year of a new office is one of them.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.