L1 Transfer Visa | L1 Visa Singapore

L1 investor visa enables a foreign company which does not yet have an affiliated US office to send an executive or manager to the United States with the purpose of establishing one. For foreign employers who are seeking to send an employee to the United States as an executive or manager in order to establish a new office, it must also be shown as follows:

Sufficient physical premises to house the new office have been secured;
The employee has been employed as an executive or manager for one continuous year in the three years preceding the filing of the petition; and
The intended US office will support an executive or managerial position within one year of the approval of the petition.

To qualify for L1 classification in this category, the US business must:

Have a qualifying relationship with a foreign company (parent company, branch, subsidiary, or affiliate, collectively referred to as qualifying organizations); and
Doing business or will be doing business as an employer in the United States and in at least one other country directly or through a qualifying organization for the duration of the beneficiary’s stay in the United States as an L1.

Doing business means the regular, systematic, and continuous provision of goods and/or services by a qualifying organization and does not include the mere presence of an agent or office of the qualifying organization in the US.

Executive capacity generally refers to the employee’s ability to make decisions of wide latitude without much oversight. Managerial capacity generally refers to the ability of the employee to supervise and control the work of professional employees and to manage the organization, or a department, subdivision, function, or component of the organization. It may also refer to the employee’s ability to manage an essential function of the organization at a high level, without direct supervision of others.

Qualified employees entering the United States to establish a new office will be allowed a maximum initial stay of one year. All other qualified employees will be allowed a maximum initial stay of three years. For all L11 employees, requests for extension of stay may be granted in increments of up to an additional two years, until the employee has reached the maximum limit of seven years.

Certain organizations may establish the required qualifying relationship in advance of filing individual L1 petitions by filing a blanket petition. In order to establish eligibility for blanket L certification, the employer:

And each of the qualifying organizations must be engaged in commercial trade or services;
Must have an office in the United States which has been doing business for one year or more;
Must have three or more domestic and foreign branches, subsidiaries, and affiliates;
Must meet one of the following criteria:

Along with the other qualifying organizations, have obtained at least 10 L1 approvals during the previous 12-month period; or
Have US subsidiaries or affiliates with combined annual sales of at least $25 million; or
Have a US work force of at least 1,000 employees.

The approval of a blanket L petition does not guarantee that an employee will be granted a L1 visa. It does, however, provide the employer with the flexibility to transfer eligible employees to the US quickly and with short notice without having to file an individual petition with USCIS.

The transferring L1 employee may be accompanied or followed by his or her spouse and unmarried children who are under 21 years of age. Such family members may seek admission as L2 visa applicants and will be granted the same period of stay as the employee. Spouses of L1 employee may apply for work authorization and there is no specific restriction as to where the L2 spouse may work.

L1 investor visa applications normally take 3 - 4 months to process depending on the completeness of the supporting documents and the caseload of the USCIS and US Embassy in the country of residence.