IN THIS GUIDE · Explain management after a planned team is reorganized
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Identify where the work moves
Hypothetical example: two teams combine and the applicant takes over tasks previously performed by another manager. Describe which duties move, which staff remain and what execution work the applicant personally absorbs. Do not treat the old chart as the new operation.
Show current authority and support
Explain decisions, discretion and responsibility for personnel or an essential function. No universal headcount decides managerial capacity. The relevant question is the actual role and who performs its underlying operational work.
Distinguish proposals from effective changes
Mark staffing plans, signed assignments and current responsibilities separately. Where new-office provisions are relevant, have the appropriate framework assessed; a reorganization within an established operation is not automatically a new-office case. A new office has been doing business in the United States for less than one year; sufficient premises and the required foreign managerial or executive year must be documented, with a supported role within one year of approval and initial approval limited to one year.
Review procedural implications of the real change
Provide current immigration documents and the actual effective dates. Have any required response assessed before relying on the old description. Neither every internal change nor every unchanged title has the same effect.
Establish the qualifying foreign year and active organizations
The foreign employment generally must include one continuous full-time qualifying year within the relevant preceding three-year period, assessed on the individual facts. U.S. days do not count toward that foreign year; a trip should not automatically be treated as breaking continuity. The qualifying organization must do business in the United States and at least one other country during the relevant period, through regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services rather than registration alone. For an ordinary L petition, the qualifying foreign work may be managerial, executive or specialized knowledge; the U.S. duties must meet the requested classification. New-office L-1A specifically requires managerial or executive foreign employment.
Supervising a crew is not by itself managerial capacity
Managerial capacity means managing the organization or a department, supervising and controlling the work of other supervisory, professional or managerial employees, or managing an essential function, with authority over hiring and firing or the equivalent, and exercising discretion over day-to-day operations. The definition also reaches someone who manages an essential function of the organisation, operates at a senior level within it, and has authority over that function rather than merely performing it. An executive primarily directs management, sets goals and policy, and operates under wide latitude. US days are not counted, although qualifying brief trips need not interrupt continuity. Obtain the intercompany services agreement, the payroll registers and the tax filings, then establish whether the paying entity is itself a parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate of the petitioner. Counting heads is not the test, but a manager with no subordinate professionals or supervisors and a day spent doing installations personally is a technician with a title. Owner or major-stockholder cases also need temporary U.S. services and subsequent foreign-assignment evidence. Decision authority, managed staff or function, budgets, and the people who perform routine work are the records that show whether the role is principally managerial or executive.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.