Read the general business expansion overview
A Léry company may have a U.S. customer agreement before operations actually begin. Establish the real business history rather than treating every signed contract, incorporation or opening announcement as the same event. Assemble a single dated chronology before any argument is drafted, with one row per event and the document that evidences it. Incorporation, bank account opened, lease signed, first service performed, first invoice issued and first payment received are six different rows, and the file is usually decided by which of them the evidence actually supports.
Identify actual provision of goods or services
The L new-office framework concerns less than one year of U.S. doing business. Doing business involves regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services, not registration or an address alone. Explain the actual performance and operating dates; a future contract may concern activity not yet undertaken. Build a dated record separating contract signature, the first actual service, subsequent recurring activity and the evidence for each. An invoice can relate to an earlier service or a future deposit; explain what it records instead of selecting its date merely because it fits the preferred filing plan. Hypothetical example: a tailings-monitoring contractor signs a U.S. framework agreement in one year and performs its first site visit eight months later. The framework agreement is evidence of a contract; the field report and its invoice are evidence of activity. Where staff worked from Canada in the interval, say so, since remote preparatory work and U.S. operations are not the same thing and describing them together blurs the very date at issue.
Apply the specific new-office capacities
New-office L-1A requires the qualifying continuous foreign year in a managerial or executive capacity, sufficient premises and an operation supporting the qualifying role within one year of approval. Initial new-office approval is limited to one year. L-1B instead requires qualifying specialized knowledge and foreign employment, sufficient premises and financial ability to pay the worker and begin business. For the premises requirement, keep the lease or licence, a floor plan or photographs, and the utility or service accounts, since an address that is only a mail service is a foreseeable objection. For the one-year new-office approval, plan the year before it begins: what hiring, contracting and revenue would have to occur for the operation to support the qualifying role, and what evidence each of those would leave behind. That plan is also what an extension request will be measured against.
Keep the group and individual evidence complete
The qualifying relationship and continuing U.S. and foreign business remain necessary. Owners or major stockholders also need the applicable evidence of temporary U.S. services and a subsequent foreign assignment. Do not treat a customer’s deadline as an automatic extension of immigration dates. Keep the foreign entity's continuing operations documented across the same period, since the group's international business must continue and is easy to overlook while attention sits on the new office. Where ownership changes during the year, record the change with its date and the documents behind it. Keep the customer's commercial deadlines out of the immigration chronology altogether: they explain urgency but establish nothing, and a file leaning on them invites the question of what the actual dates were.
What else is on your mind?
Does being a business owner or director qualify me for L-1A?What employment history should an L-1 transfer review cover?What makes a new-office L-1A case different?Why does an L-2 spouse’s admission record matter for work?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.