CASE: L-1A petition extension / I-129
PETITIONER: Child Care Center in Cleveland, OH
BENEFICIARY: Chinese General Manager
Our client is a Chinese company which has its US subsidiary in the greater Cleveland area. In 2016, our client acquired a child development center and has offered child care services to children from the age of 6 weeks to 12 years old. They contacted our office in the middle of August 2017 to seek legal assistance for a possible L-1A extension for their employee. He came from China in 2016 with his L-1A visa to work as a General Manager.
The L-1A nonimmigrant classification enables a U.S. employer to transfer an executive or manager from one of its affiliated foreign offices to one of its offices in the United States. This classification also enables a foreign company which does not yet have an affiliated U.S. office to send an executive or manager to the United States with the purpose of establishing one.
Upon retention, our office prepared and eventually filed the L-1A extension petition with various supporting documents. The application included a detailed employer support letter, documentation to demonstrate the qualifying corporate relationship between the parent company in China and the U.S., financial documents, past experience documents, organization chart, and physical premises evidence among others. We filed the L-1A extension petition on August 30, 2017 via premium processing.
However, on September 8, 2017, the USCIS issued Request for Evidence (RFE) for our client’s extension petition. USCIS requested more evidence to demonstrate sufficient physical premises of petitioner’s business and evidence that our client met the requirement of “one year managerial or executive position abroad.” Our office prepared and filed the Response to RFE on September 20, 2017 with 37 exhibits (A to KK).
Eventually, our client’s L-1A application was approved on September 26, 2017. His L-1A status has been extended to October 2019.