L1 Visa Business Plans
An L1 visa for an intracompany transferee is one of the visas most often used for business people who wish either to work in the United States temporarily or to settle there permanently. Our L1 visa business plans help you establish a credible basis for your application. If you have trouble pulling together the required information, we will help you do it so that your plan is USCIS-compliant the first time.
If you receive an RFE or NOID from a plan submitted by someone else, we can help you resolve it successfully. L1 RFE and NOID resolution is one of our specialties.
Why Our L1 Visa Business Plans?
- Attorney-approved L1 plan format
- Integration of all USCIS-required L1 visa documentation
- Credible, validated description of business, market and petitioner's participation in the business
- Assistance with gathering information required to validate the petition
- Acquisition of DNB Live Business Identity certification
- Very low RFE cost for documentation
- Successful RFE or NOID responses for previously incomplete submissions
Qualifying Relationship Validation
VIBE Gives Way to Live Business Identity
While VIBE has disappeared from the D&B website, it is still listed on the official USCIS website. Nonetheless, it has long since disappeared and has now been replace by Live Business Identity.
Fortunately, Live Business Identity is also a free option for applicants who need to establish the beneficial ownership of their countries. The USCIS still requires that submissions for visas such EB1-C or L1 validate the relationship between the parent foreign company and their US-based company. VIBE has been used to do this:
Validation Instrument for Business Enterprises (VIBE) is a tool designed to enhance USCIS’ adjudications of certain employment-based immigration petitions and applications.
Live Business Identity
According to Dun and Bradstreet, Live Business Identity helps ensure you have the most accurate and up-to-date view of organizations. The starting point of Live Business Identity is the Dun & Bradstreet D‑U‑N‑S® Number, a proprietary, unique nine-digit identifier for businesses that allows us to track a business and its related data and connections throughout the full life cycle of that business. Read More Here
Attorney-Approved L1 Visa Business Plan Format
Get in touch with us and learn more about our L1 plans. Starting at $1250
Our L1 visa business plans are noted for their checklist inclusion of the documentation required by the USCIS for this category. While we cannot provide all of this information, we can ensure that it is available so that we can use it in the plan. Two of the most important things that the USCIS wants to validate is the managerial nature of the petitioner's job and their relationship with the parent company. We do both and we use the VIBE form--which the USCIS will likely request in an RFE if it doesn't exist--to establish that the new business exists and to establish its relationship to the parent company. These highly-detailed plans start at $1250.
The L1 Visa
Qualification
The L1 visa requires that the applicant have been employed outside the United States for one continuous year in the previous three years. This position must be managerial, executive; or, must require the use of specialized knowledge. The petitioner must be transferring to a position in the US for the same or a related company in a position that is managerial, executive or requires the use of specialized knowledge. In order to qualify for the L1 visa the non-US employer and the prospective employer in the US must be related in one of four ways allowed by the regulations.
- First Option: The two employers could be parent and subsidiary. It makes no difference which employer (US or non-US) is the parent and which the subsidiary.
- Second Option: One of the employers could be the branch office of the other. Again, the US employer may be either the headquarters or the branch office.
- Third Option: The businesses could be a sister companies—that is, they could be owned by a mutual parent.
- Fourth Option: The companies could be affiliates, both owned by the same person or by the same group of people.
In order to qualify for the L-1 visa, the applicant must show that the non-US business will continue to actively trade (to be ‘doing business,’ in the words of the regulation), either on its own or through a parent, subsidiary, branch, sister company or affiliate, during the applicant’s stay in L1 status.
Recent AAO Non-Precedent Decisions
Matter of 1-A-N-T-D-, Inc and Matter of D-P-, Inc are two of the many non-precedent decisions for L-1 petitions this year. You can read more here. The most important reason to read some or all of these decisions is that virtually all relate to one USCIS assessment:
In visa petition proceedings, it is the petitioner's burden to establish eligibility for the immigration benefit sought.
These AAO are not to discourage you from applying for an L-1 visa, they are to encourage you to get a business plan that is thorough and USCIS compliant so that you do not get an RFE in the first place. Meeting the requirements that provide the burden of proof for an L-1 petitioner is essential. That is what we do. We cannot guarantee that you will not get an RFE but we can guarantee that our plans ensure that you are presenting the required information. They are USCIS compliant. As you read some of these decisions, learn what the pitfalls are because we can help you avoid them.
Matter of 1-A-N-T-D-, Inc., ID# 4409376 (AAO July 18, 2019) - L-1A
Matter of D-P-, Inc., ID# 5122351 (AAO July 29, 2019) - L-1A
Are you convinced that we can help you without reading the decisions? Get in touch and we will help you with a business plan or an RFE.
L1A Classification
The L1A nonimmigrant classification enables a U.S. employer to transfer an executive or manager from one of its affiliated foreign offices to one of its offices in the United States. This classification also enables a foreign company which does not yet have an affiliated U.S. office to send an executive or manager to the United States with the purpose of establishing one. The L1A visa requires that the applicant be employed outside the United States for one continuous year in the previous three years in a managerial or executive position; and, that the applicant be transferring to managerial or executive position in the United States for the same or affiliated company. This visa, with extensions, allows for a maximum stay of seven years.
L1B Classification
The L1B nonimmigrant classification enables a U.S. employer to transfer a professional employee with specialized knowledge relating to the organization’s interests from one of its affiliated foreign offices to one of its offices in the United States. This classification also enables a foreign company which does not yet have an affiliated U.S. office to send a specialized knowledge employee to the United States to help establish one. The L1B visa requires that the applicant be employed outside the United States for one continuous year in the previous three years in a position that requires specialized knowledge; and, be transferring to a position requiring specialized knowledge in the United States for the same or affiliated company. This visa, with extensions, allows for a maximum stay of five years.