-Free Business Plan ReviewL1 VISA
-High-speed processing (2-3 weeks on average)
-2 team members with you every step of the way (the
lead attorney and lead paralegal) in addition to back-end support
-Immigration Processing by people who understand Business and Immigration

Are you a manager or executive of a foreign company looking to transfer to an affiliate, branch, or subsidiary office in the United States, or open a new office? The L1 visa (intracompany transferee) may be for you.

The L1 visa is the best choice if you are limited to an E or L visa (i.e. if you don’t want to invest $800,000 [TEA] or $1,050,000 into the EB5 Green Card program). The catch is that you must have run an operation in a foreign country for a year and intend to keep on running it. For some people, this may not be an option. If this is not possible, an E-2 treaty investor visa may be the better choice. Feel free to give us a call at (800) 820-8210 if you’re unsure which visa to pursue. On the other hand, the L-1 visa is wonderful for nationals from countries that do not have a treaty (of navigation, friendship, and commerce) with us and therefore do not qualify for an E2.

The L-1 intracompany transferee visa is one of the hardest to win, if not the hardest because it leads to a Green Card very easily compared to the other methods. It only takes about a year after you get your L1 visa to get a Green Card; others wait 6-8 years with a job offer, have to place ads to show they are the most qualified, and more. But Our law firm has been handling L-1 visas for 34 years and we are fully equipped to handle your case. We are a business law firm as well as an immigration firm, so we understand the difficulties you may be facing.

The L-1 intracompany transferee visa allows upper-level management employees, as well as workers and owners who direct the company (executives)  to open a new office or location for their company in the United States or transfer to an already existing location. The office or location in the United States can be a branch, subsidiary, or affiliate. “Affiliate” means the new location needs a commonality of ownership with the original office. As long as you own 51% of the company abroad and the company in the US, you may qualify as an affiliate. Essentially, you could own a software consulting firm in Toronto or a Fish n Chips restaurant in West London, open something else such as a franchise in the US, and the two of them may be completely unrelated; as long as you owned both businesses, you would qualify for the L-1 intracompany transferee visa.

Initially, the L-1 intracompany transferee visa is only valid for one year for a new office, then you can renew twice for three years each with a maximum level of seven years total.

L-1 intracompany transferee visas offer a nice perk: they may be used as a jumping point to a Green Card. After one year of living and working in the United States with an L-1 intracompany transferee visa, you are allowed to apply for an Employment-Based (EB) Green Card.

To outline things in simpler terms, the main benefits of the L-1 Intracompany Transferee visa are:

1. You can enter this country with a very small investment. Compare this to the EB5, which requires a bare minimum of $800,000 or $1,050,000, and you must hire 10 employees for a period of two years.
2. It can lead to a Green Card, as is possible with the E-2 treaty investor visa.
3. The category of Green Card the L-1 visa leads to is the highest level, known as EB1, and the position does not have to be advertised (as in a process called Labor Certification, or more commonly known as PERM).

The L1 intracompany transferee visa is a very versatile visa and can be obtained in a month’s time with Premium Processing, a process by which you pay an extra $2805 (2024) for a rapid reply from the immigration department, Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS).

Many people ask us whether an L-1 intracompany transferee visa places restrictions on the work your spouse would be allowed to do if he or she accompanied you to the United States. There are no restrictions! Your spouse would be able to obtain authorization to work in any field, whether or not the work is related to the company you have invested in.

If you would like to know more about the eligibility requirements for the L-1 intracompany transferee visa, feel free to call us:

Have questions, or ready to get started? Give us a call today for a Free L1 visa consultation!

For those calling from inside or outside the US: (619) 677-5727 From London England 02033710984

From Canada Only [toll-free]: (800) 637-6178