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THE L-1 INTRACOMPANY TRANSFEREE
AND E-1 E-2 TREATY TRADER / TREATY INVESTOR VISAS COMPARED The L1 Intracompany Tranferee visa is the best choices
if you are limited to an E or L visa (ie you do not want to invest half
a million or more into the EB5 Green Card program). The catch to this
visa is that you must have run an operation in a foreign country for a
year and you intend to keep on running it. For some people this is not
an option. For large companies. this is often an easy choice. If this
is not possible, look to the right of this page and see if you qualify
for the E Treaty visa. 1. You can enter this country with a very smaill investment. Compare this to the EB5, which requires a bare minimum of $500,000 and you must hire 10 employees for a period of two years. 2. It can lead to a Green Card, which the E visa doesn't. 3. The category it leads to is the highest level, known as EB1 and the position does not have to be advertised (as in a process called Labor Certification). The L1 is also called the Intracompany Transferee visa.
The reason for this is the person in the US is a transferee of the
company; in other words, he or she has been transferred from the
company in the other country to the company in the US. The office or
location in the US can be a branch, subsidiary, or affiliate. Affiliate
means commonality of ownership and was the latest change to the L1
Intracompany Transferee visa and is a very useful one. Essentially, you
could own a software consulting firm in Toronto and a Fish n Chips
restaurant in West London, and the two of them may be unrelated, but as
you own both of them, they are affiliates and you would qualify for the
L1 Intracompany Transferee (we are trying to get you familiar with the
term by repeating it) The L-1, in our opinion, is the best choice if you can get it. The catch to this visa is that you must have run an operation outside the United States for a year and intend to keep on running it. For many people this is not an option. For large companies and many small companies, it is a very worthwhile option and works just fine. The main benefits of the L1 are: 1. You can enter this country with a very smaill investment. Compare this to the EB5, which requires a bare minimum of $500,000 and you must hire 10 employees for a period of two years. 2. It can lead to a Green Card, which the E visa doesn't. 3. The category it leads to is the highest level, known as EB1 and the position does not have to be advertised (as in a process called Labor Certification). The L1 is a very versatile visa and can be obtained in a month's time with Premium Processing ( a process whereby you pay an extra $1000 for a rapid reply from the immigration department, known as CIS, or Citizenship and Immigration Services ).We have won cases with investments of as low as $50,000 but we reccomend that you invest at least $100,000 to be safe. Under a new provision of the law, your spouse can obtain work authorizattion to work in any fied; he or she is not limited to the company sponsoriong the L1. Bear in mind here that when we state 'company sponsoring the L1', it could be a small company (say 2 people), but it has a legal entitiy (i.e. corporation) and even though you may be the one paying all the bills, it is the company that officially sponsors you, even though you are the one signing the papers on its behalf. THE E1 AND E2 TREATY INVESTOR AND TREATY TRADER VISAS The Treaty Invesor or Treaty Trader E visa is for persons who are from a Treaty Country. In genteral terms, the treaty countries include Western European countries, Canada, Mexico, and Australia. You are welcome to use the link above to see all of the Treaty Countries; there are many more. Interestingly, some countries allow for both the E1 visa (Treaty Trader or an entity involved in import/export) and the E2 Treaty Investor visa (the standard business investment), yet some allow only the one or the other. Be careful to plan this carefully before you plan to make a move. The E visa (when we state E visa we will be referring to both the E1 Treaty Trader and the E2 Treaty Investor) is a very interesting visa. It can be renewed indefinitely, which makes it very different from the rest. Although the F1 student visa can last for as long as your education takes, also called D/S, fpr duration of study, at some point the government will expect you to stop studying and get a real life. On the other hand, you can keep renewing the E Treaty Investor visa for decades. It has a very strange catch to it: you must have an intent to return to your country of origin at some time in the futre. However, and this is surprising, you do not have to define when that is. As a result, people come to the United States, run their businesses for many years, and then return home. Some people look at the E visa as an alternative visa when other situations fail.  |
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