IN THIS GUIDE · A manager whose employer holds a registered but inactive U.S. subsidiary
Start with the L-1A eligibility and application overview
Doing business is an activity test, not a registration test
A qualifying relationship between the Canadian company and the U.S. entity is necessary but not sufficient. Both organizations must be doing business, and doing business means the regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services. A corporate registry printout, an annual return and a mailing address prove that an entity exists. They prove nothing about activity. Ingrid's file therefore needs evidence of actual operations on both sides of the border: invoices issued and paid, contracts performed, payroll records, insurance in force on operating equipment, and tax filings that show revenue rather than nil returns. Two dormant years is a hole in exactly the place the adjudicator will look first.
What the evidence must prove about her own year abroad
L-1A requires one continuous year of qualifying employment with the group abroad within the three years immediately before the petition, in a managerial, executive or specialized-knowledge capacity. Ingrid's operations director title does not establish that on its own. The proof runs through payroll records with dates, an organizational chart showing the dispatchers, driver managers and safety staff who report to her, evidence that she sets schedules and budgets rather than executing them, and a description that separates her work from the drivers and mechanics she coordinates. Any gap, leave or change of employer inside that window has to be identified honestly, because a continuous year is a factual question and a title spanning three years can conceal a break.
What the evidence must prove about the role she is going to
The U.S. position must be primarily managerial or executive, and a general manager of a company with no employees is a description in search of a business. If the subsidiary is genuinely being restarted, the petition needs to show what it will operate: terminal or yard arrangements, equipment to be leased or purchased, customers or contracts in prospect, and a hiring plan with the roles Ingrid would supervise. Where the U.S. entity has not been doing business for a year, a new-office analysis becomes relevant, which brings its own evidence of sufficient physical premises and the capacity to support a managerial role within the first year, and an approval limited to one year rather than three.
What the evidence cannot be asked to do
Documents cannot be made to prove activity that did not occur. Backdating invoices, issuing intercompany charges purely to create revenue, or presenting a lease signed the week before filing as evidence of two years of operations are all worse than admitting the dormancy. The honest paths are to restore genuine operations in the subsidiary and file later on real records, or to file as a new office and accept the shorter first approval with its extension test at the end of the year. Both are ordinary and both survive scrutiny. What does not survive is a file whose corporate evidence and whose operational evidence tell different stories.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.