IN THIS GUIDE · Identify the legal employer behind division and department names
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Separate the business unit from the legal entity
Hypothetical example: an employee works in a division whose name appears on presentations while a different legal name appears on the employment agreement. Identify the entity operating that division and the proposed U.S. employer. Do not describe a department as a subsidiary merely because it has its own internal budget. Start from the payroll record rather than the organisation chart, because payroll names the entity that actually paid. Work outward from there to the employment agreement, the tax slips and the pension or benefits registration. Where those four documents name the same entity the question is closed; where they diverge, that divergence is the thing to explain.
Connect records bearing different names
Explain genuine operating names and changes using appropriate records and effective dates. Distinguish a renamed unit from a transfer of employment to another entity. The explanation should make the actual employer and company relationship traceable rather than treating every name variation as the same legal event. Build the map chronologically and stop at every date where a name changes. For each change, record which of two things happened: the same legal person adopted a new operating name, or the employment moved to a different legal person. Only the second alters who holds the qualifying year, and only the second calls for corporate evidence. Give the finished map a version number and a date. Groups reorganise, and a map circulating without either becomes the source everyone quotes long after it stopped matching the registry.
Describe authority within the actual organization
Show whether the applicant manages a unit, directs personnel or manages an essential function and what decisions the applicant actually makes. A division-wide title is not enough. Identify operational work the applicant performs and the people or arrangements supporting the proposed managerial or executive role. Write the duty description before anyone edits the job title. A title revised in anticipation of a filing invites the question of what the applicant did under the earlier one, and the answer then has to come from documents never written for that purpose: approvals signed, budgets set, hiring decisions taken, personnel supervised.
Have the legal relationship assessed on its own terms
Provide the actual entity and ownership or control evidence relevant to the proposed transfer. Do not assume internal reporting lines establish a qualifying corporate relationship. Foreign employment, continuing business and the proposed role remain separate matters that must fit the actual facts. One more sequencing point deserves stating plainly. Ownership and control evidence is generated by acts, such as share transfers, resolutions and filings with a registry, and those acts carry dates that cannot be moved afterwards. Have counsel say what the record must show before those acts are taken, since a retroactive resolution answers nothing.
A corporate reorganisation cannot be undone to fit the petition
Establish the facts in the order that a later change cannot repair. Which legal entity employs the applicant today is a records question answerable this week. Whether that entity stands in a qualifying relationship with the U.S. business, as parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, is a second question, and the relationship must continue to exist rather than merely have existed when the group chart was drawn. The continuous year of full-time employment abroad within the three years preceding the filing or admission is measured against the employer that actually held the employment; moving the applicant onto another entity's payroll is simple to arrange and impossible to reverse once payroll, tax and pension records have been issued in that name. Hypothetical example: a group transfers the staff of a specialty food-processing plant to a newly incorporated services company two months before the intended filing, and the year abroad now rests partly on an entity whose link to the U.S. business has never been documented. Ask for the assessment before the reorganisation is executed, not after the registrations are lodged.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.