IN THIS GUIDE · Check the legal companies behind a shared franchise or licensed brand
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Map the parties without using the brand as the entity
Hypothetical example: two businesses use the same licensed name but have different owners. Identify the actual companies, shareholders or control arrangements relevant to the proposal. Do not assume the commercial brand makes one business a branch or subsidiary of the other. Hypothetical example: a veterinary diagnostics company licenses its testing brand to independently owned clinics in two countries, and one licensee assumes the licensor is its parent. The share registers settle that in minutes, and they usually show nothing of the sort. Ask for the certificate of incorporation, the current share or members register, and any shareholders agreement for each company named, then write the relationship down in one sentence a reader with no commercial background could verify against those documents.
Explain any qualifying relationship with evidence
Provide the actual ownership or control documents for assessment. A commercial agreement may be relevant context without proving the required relationship. Conversely, do not dismiss a proposal solely because a franchise is involved if other genuine corporate facts require review. The single record that most often decides this point is the share register, kept by the corporate secretary or by the firm that maintains the minute book. Where control rather than ownership is relied on, the governing document is normally a shareholders or unanimous members agreement, and it has to be produced rather than characterized. A franchise agreement can sit alongside those records as context; it cannot stand in for them, because it allocates brand rights and quality obligations rather than corporate control.
Identify the actual managerial or executive work
Describe the applicant’s duties, decisions, discretion and operational support in the U.S. business. Running a branded location does not automatically establish managerial capacity. Include personal delivery work and approvals retained by an owner or other decision maker. State plainly which of the two capacities is claimed. Managerial capacity generally concerns direction of the organization, a department, subdivision or function, or supervision of professional employees; executive capacity generally concerns direction at a broad policy level with wide latitude in decision-making. Personally performing the operation’s core service is not by itself either one. Where the applicant would both manage and produce, describe that split honestly and name who performs the remaining work, since a plan with nobody else in it tends to describe a producer.
Keep the employment history tied to the legal employer
Prepare relevant foreign-employment dates and duties and have the applicable continuous-year period assessed. Several years under one brand may involve different employers or relationships. Explain those facts rather than treating brand continuity as proof of every L requirement. The employment condition is specific: one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the three years immediately preceding the application, with a qualifying organization. Brand tenure is not employment tenure. Where a licensee changed hands during those years, the employing company may have changed even though the sign above the door did not, and the qualifying year then has to be located within the correct entity. Assemble payroll records, records of employment and dated employment agreements for each period rather than a single letter summarising a decade.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.