Read the general business expansion overview
Hypothetical example: a Parksville seniors' care operator incorporated an American company three years ago to hold a property option, gave it a registered agent and a bank account, and never traded through it. It now wants to transfer a manager and assumes the entity's age means a straightforward petition. Age is not the test. What matters is whether the entity has been doing business, and a company that has provided no goods or services is treated as a new office regardless of its incorporation date.
Doing business has a definition
The regulations describe doing business as the regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services, and state that the mere presence of an agent or office does not meet the standard. A dormant entity with a registered agent, a bank account and a property option has a legal existence and no trading history, and it therefore cannot show the operations that an established-office petition assumes. Recognizing this early changes what has to be prepared, because the two kinds of petition ask for different evidence and produce different initial periods of stay.
What a new-office petition then requires
A petition for a manager or executive coming to open or run a new office needs evidence that sufficient physical premises have been secured, that the beneficiary completed the qualifying year of employment abroad, and that the operation will support a managerial or executive role within one year of approval. That last element is a plan: hiring by role and date, projected revenue, and a description of what the manager will actually be managing by month twelve. If approved, the initial period is one year, and an extension is decided on what the business did rather than on what it forecast.
Choose deliberately between waiting and filing now
An operator in this position has two honest options. It can file as a new office, accept the one-year approval, and run the first year knowing it will be measured. Or it can begin trading and wait until the U.S. entity has been doing business for more than one year before filing as an established operation; beginning to trade and filing sooner does not avoid the new-office definition. Which is better depends on how quickly the business can genuinely start and on how much depends on the manager being present to start it. What does not work is filing as though the entity has a history it does not have.
What else is on your mind?
Does being a business owner or director qualify me for L-1A?What employment history should an L-1 transfer review cover?What makes a new-office L-1A case different?Why does an L-2 spouse’s admission record matter for work?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.