28 Dec USCIS Approves L-1B Petition for U.S. Employer to Transfer Foreign Professional Employee with Specialized Knowledge
Getson & Schatz aided a European multi-national corporation transfer one of its employees with specialized knowledge about the Company’s processes and procedures from a European subsidiary to its U.S. subsidiary by obtaining an L-1B visa for this foreign worker.
L visas, or intracompany transferee visas, are available to companies who wish to transfer a foreign worker to their U.S. parent, branch, affiliate or subsidiary company, or for companies that wish to establish a U.S. company and want a foreign worker to help with that “new office” process. This employee must have been employed with the qualifying foreign organization in an appropriate capacity for at least one continuous year in the three years immediately preceding his or her application for admission to the U.S. A qualifying foreign organization is a parent company, branch, subsidiary, or affiliate. The L-1B visa requires that the foreign worker making the intracompany transfer have specialized knowledge pertaining to the job that will be performed in the U.S, while the L-1A visa requires that the foreign worker be an executive or manager in order to secure the intra-company transfer. Since our client wished to make an intracompany transfer for a foreign worker with specialized knowledge, we pursued an L-1B visa.
Our immigration lawyers provided USCIS with a detailed explanation of the nature and extent of the parent company and U.S. employer’s operations, the relationship between the parent company and its subsidiaries, the nature of the foreign worker’s employment with one of the company’s European subsidiaies, and how this foreign worker’s specialized knowledge will be put to use in the U.S. The parent company, through its numerous international subsidiaries, develops, produces, sells, and provides high-tech measuring and testing systems and services for industrial machines. Our client’s international subsidiaries do not all provide all of these services, and it wished to expand its U.S. operations to include certain products and services. For at least one of the three years immediately preceding his admission to the U.S., the foreign worker had been working at one of the parent company’s European subsidiaries, which made it a qualifying organization, as it, along with the U.S. employer, are both wholly-owned subsidiaries. Further, the foreign worker’s prior position and specialized experience were to be put to use in the U.S. as he dealt specifically with the needed products, services, equipment, and techniques. This experience would enable him to assist the U.S. subsidiary to establish, develop, and market a new department servicing industrial customers throughout the continental U.S.
In addition to providing USCIS with detaled information about the company, the proposed job duties in the U.S., and the foreign national’s specialized knowledge, we provided information regarding the company’s status as doing business and corporate documents to prove the required relationship between the U.S. employer and the foreign affiliate. USCIS approved the U.S. employer’s petition on behalf of the foreign worker.