L-1A Visas: Qualifications

• Doing Business
  
• Executive Capacity
  
• Managerial Capacity
  
  

Doing Business using the L-1A visa

Before the L-1A visa can be considered for a company employee transferring to the U.S.A., the overseas company is required to provide evidence that it has a genuine relationship of some type with the U.S. company. Ownership and control are two factors used by the United States Immigration and Citizenship Service (USICS) to determine the quality of the relationship. Typically, ownership means legal ownership rights and absolute power over a company and control means the authority and right to direct the operations and management of the business.

An business organization that wants to use L-1A visas to send managers or executives to the U.S.A. has to be a subsidiary, parent, affiliate, or branch of the U.S. company.

A subsidiary is a firm or corporation which a parent company owns either directly or indirectly, more than 50 percent of it giving it complete control over it or has 50 percent of it making it a joint venture which means equal control or does not own as much as 50 percent but does control it. A parent is a corporation or firm which possesses subsidiaries. A branch is an operating office or division of exactly the same organization but it is exists in another location. An example of this would be when a company has branches of its business spread throughout several countries globally and needs to transfer specific employees from one to another. An affiliate is 1 of 2 subsidiaries and both are owned and are controlled by exactly the same individual or parent.

Executives

The beneficiary taking up an L-1A visa should be holding an executive or managerial position. A position that is taken up by an executive is one when the person mainly plays the role of directing through establishing policies and setting goals. He or she is also given the right to use discretion when necessary. Boards of Directors and stockholders do not have control over a company executive.

Managerial capacity

Managerial capacity has a slightly different meaning. It is when the manager has been given the responsibility to manage the organization or department and supervise and control the work carried out by other professional, supervisory or managerial employees, or manage a necessary function in a subdivision or department of the organization; This also includes the responsibility of hiring and firing and controlling the direction of day-to-day activities of the organization. Those employees who are called first-line supervisors are not usually considered to be managers when it comes to an L-1A visa except when the employees under their supervision are professionals.

There is a mountain of information that the USCIS requires before it is prepared to allocate an L-1 A visa to a candidate.