Identify the employment arrangement during the secondment
Hypothetical example: an employee spends months at an affiliate learning a deployment process while remaining on the original company’s payroll. Record the agreement, employer, host, dates and duties. Have the relevant employment period assessed; a training location alone does not establish who employed the person. Hypothetical example: a precision-optics manufacturer sends an employee to an affiliate to learn its internal lens-defect coding protocol while the home company continues payroll and performance reviews. The record should state which entity directed the work, what access was granted, and whether the employee performed productive duties. A host badge or worksite address cannot answer those questions alone.
Describe the knowledge actually acquired
Explain special knowledge of the organization’s interests and international application or advanced knowledge of its processes and procedures. Identify what was learned, how it was applied and why it matters to the U.S. work. Participation in a secondment is not itself proof of the knowledge standard. Ask for concrete examples: a restricted procedure, an unusual system dependency, or a problem the employee resolved by using internal methods. Then test whether the proposed assignment actually calls for that knowledge. Generic praise, a list of software names, or a long tenure statement does not show how the claimed expertise is distinct or advanced.
Connect the history with the proposed transfer
Document the actual qualifying entities, ongoing business and one continuous qualifying year abroad within the relevant three-year period, with individual timing reviewed. Keep the host’s role distinct from the intended U.S. employer. A shared project does not automatically establish every qualifying corporate relationship. The active petitioner and foreign employer must be connected as parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate. An L-1B new office receives at most one initial year and requires sufficient premises plus financial capacity to pay the employee and begin doing business. Client-site work must remain petitioner-controlled and not labour-for-hire, and L-1B is capped at five years. The U.S. petitioner must be connected to the foreign organization through a qualifying relationship, and the individual must have completed one qualifying year abroad before the relevant transfer event. Plan the sequence around evidence availability and approval timing. L-1B time is generally limited to five years, which makes a temporary deployment plan important even where the commercial project may continue longer.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.