EB-1C Visa vs. L1-A Visa: What's the difference?

Permanent workers

Every fiscal year (October 1st – September 30th), approximately 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas are made available to qualified applicants under the provisions of U.S. immigration law.

Employment based immigrant visas are divided into five preference categories.

Certain spouses and children may accompany or follow-to-join employment-based immigrants.  (Note that while the L-1A Visa category has a counter part L-1B, the EB-1C has no such counterpart (for spouses).  Thus, qualify as an EB-1C immigrant, the alien worker must perform managerial or executive duties in the US company whereas the L-1B only has to perform work that reflect specialized knowledge).

To be considered for an immigrant visa under some of the employment-based categories, the applicant's prospective employer or agent must first obtain a labor certification approval from the Department of Labor. (if required), the employer then files  an Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker, Form I-140, with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for the appropriate employment-based preference category.

All categories of employment-based immigrant visas are issued in the chronological order in which the petitions were filed until the annual numerical limit for the category is reached.

The filing date of a petition becomes the applicant's priority date. Immigrant visas cannot be issued until an applicant's priority date is reached. In certain heavily oversubscribed categories, there may be a waiting period of several years before a priority date is reached.

Employment First Preference (E1) is for:

1. Persons with extraordinary ability;

2. outstanding professors and researchers; and

3. Multinational managers or executives who have been employed for at least one of the three preceding years by the overseas affiliate, parent, subsidiary, or branch of the U.S. employer.

Labor certification is not required for any of the Priority Worker subgroups.

Priority Workers receive 28.6 percent of the yearly worldwide limit of employment-based immigrant visas.

Applications based on L-1 Visa are included on First Preference, 3rd subcategory.

Employment Third Preference (E3) is for skilled workers, professional, or other workers.

Immigration office defines "skilled workers" as: "persons whose job requires a minimum of two years training or work experience"; “Professionals” as persons whose job requires at least a U.S. baccalaureate degree or a foreign equivalent and are a member of the professions, and The “other workers” subcategory is for persons performing unskilled labor requiring less than 2 years training or experience.

There are also business structure considerations that must be addressed for both Visa classes and categories.  For instance, the EB-1C category requires a qualified multinational relationship between the U.S. and foreign business entities.  The relationship involves a company investment from one entity to another.  This category of Visa is used to transfer executives between related entities perhaps across borders.

With the EB-1C, the US entity is the petitioner, and the transferee alien is the beneficiary.  This category would permit an owner of a business enterprise to immigrate to the US so long as he or she would otherwise satisfy the substantive eligibility requirements.   Proper planning by a qualified investor can result in the issuance of a permanent residency visa without the necessity of investing substantial money in a new enterprise.

It has been argued that the L-1A is only the first step toward obtaining an EB-1C Green Card petition approval.  However, it should be emphasized that, while similar, the L1-A and the EB-1C are not directly connected inamsuch as the L-1A is not a pre-requisite or condition precedent to obtaining an EB-1C.  

Practically speaking, our firm's multinational clients often opt for the L-1A visa for permanent transferee, because of the special EB-1C requirements relating to multinational corporations, etc.

For more information or to get started with obtaining a US Visa contact the seasoned professionals at Visa America (www.visaamerica.us) by visiting our website or send us an email to info@visaamerica.us.