IN THIS GUIDE · Document the temporary assignment when the transferee owns a major interest in the company
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Identify the ownership and the required assignment evidence
Provide accurate ownership records. For an owner or major stockholder, the L regulation requires evidence that the U.S. services will be temporary and that the person will be transferred to an assignment abroad afterward. Describe the real arrangement rather than inventing a return position or treating personal ownership as a reason to omit the evidence.
Show a management job rather than ownership alone
Explain the applicant’s regular U.S. duties, discretion and personnel or essential function managed. A company owner who mainly performs its day-to-day production does not establish managerial capacity simply by controlling the shares. The proposed job must primarily involve qualifying managerial or executive work.
Establish the qualifying international organization
Generally document a continuous year of qualifying full-time foreign employment within the relevant preceding three years, a qualifying corporate relationship and continuing qualifying business in the United States and abroad. A new-office L-1A case additionally needs sufficient premises, a managerial or executive foreign year and support for the qualifying U.S. role within one year of approval; initial approval is limited to one year.
Which document establishes the ownership position
Ownership is asserted in many places and established in few. A share register or equivalent corporate record, together with the instrument that transferred the shares, generally settles the point; an organization chart, a website biography and a management summary do not, because none of them is a record of title. Where the corporate record and the tax filings describe different proportions, ask the company's accountant which one reflects the current position and why the other differs, then put that explanation in the file rather than adopting the more convenient figure. The reason this matters is narrow: the owner or major stockholder evidence requirement is triggered by the interest actually held, so an unclear ownership picture leaves it unclear whether that requirement applies at all.
Where owner-run petitions usually come apart
The recurring failure is not ownership itself but the description of the work. A petition listing strategic responsibilities while the same person quotes jobs, supervises no one and personally performs the service invites the conclusion that the proposed role is not primarily managerial or executive. A second failure is the return paragraph written as a promise with nothing behind it: no continuing operations described, no work identified for the person to return to. A third is silence about how the foreign entity keeps functioning once its principal is abroad, which matters because qualifying business must continue in both countries. Each of these is repaired by describing what is actually planned, including the part of the plan that remains undecided.
Assemble the qualifying year before anything else
The foreign employment year is the element most often assumed and least often documented. Generally required is one continuous year of qualifying full-time employment abroad with the qualifying organization within the relevant preceding three years, and the words « with the organization » carry more weight than owners expect: employment by a company that is related commercially but not by a qualifying corporate relationship does not count. Pull payroll records, employment agreements and any period of leave or secondment, then mark the three-year window on a calendar and check that a continuous year fits inside it. Hypothetical example: an owner who spent eleven months abroad during the relevant period and the remainder on United States project visits has a question to resolve before anything else in the file matters.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.