L-1 For General Manager Approved Within 14 Days

Year: 2020
Nationality: Chinese
Beneficiary: Mr. Wang
Company Industry: Financial asset management company
China Company: Established in 2009, 40 employees
US company: established in New York in October 2016, with 5 employees
Beneficiary position: General Manager of a US company

BACKGROUND
– Mr. Wang has a history of L-1 extension denials.
– The actual operation of the American company is only 3 years, the company is unstable, difficult to manage the mobility of employees, and has only 5 employees.
– U.S. corporations filing tax returns are losing money every year and their liabilities are increasing year after year.
– After Mr. Wang’s failed L-1 extension, the U.S. company lacked a backbone to manage, and many businesses were forced to suspend or even lost. The success of this L-1 application would directly affect the survival of the U.S. company.

Brief background:
Mr. Wang established a U.S. branch in New York in 2016, and his initial L-1 petition was approved for 1 year in 2017; in 2018, Mr. Wang’s L-1 extension failed and he had to return to China. The U.S. company was originally in its start-up phase, and once Mr. Wang left as the backbone of the company, it was a huge blow to the development of the business, thus also causing the company to lose money every year and increasing its liabilities year after year. In order to make the U.S. company sustainable, Mr. Wang decided to reapply for L-1 and go to the U.S. as soon as possible to help the U.S. company get on the right track.

After his previous failed L-1 extension and the increased standard of review under Trump’s policy, Mr. Wang was very worried that this reapplication would be blocked again. After a lot of inquiries, he finally made an appointment with Tsang & Associates for a paid online consultation on the recommendation of a friend and decided to formally engage us to handle the L-1 reapplication on the same day.

KEYS TO SUCCESS
1. Develop the best application package and business plan.
In response to the special situation of Mr. Wang’s company, Mr. Zang had a video conference with himself and the U.S. company team in a three-way call first. Firstly, it was necessary to have an in-depth understanding of the current operation of the U.S. company, secondly, Mr. Wang proposed strategies to develop his company after coming to the U.S. Finally, the lawyer then summarized and made suggestions that could be improved to develop the best application plan and business plan.

Although the U.S. company is losing money every year, but through Mr. Wang’s explanation, we understand that the U.S. company has made a lot of business-related investments in the early stage, and Mr. Wang’s departure has caused certain losses. However, as long as the company is operated properly, it can make back its capital or even make profit. Tsang & Associates’ professional business team developed a business plan for Mr. Wang’s U.S. company, including details of the U.S. company’s development direction, development stages, staff hiring arrangements, project plans, and capital flow operation for the next 3-5 years, so that the immigration officer would not have a bias or misunderstanding of the company’s current situation.

In addition, as a company in its infancy, it is reasonable to have a high turnover and a small number of employees. Mr. Wang has also outsourced many of the company’s functions to other U.S. companies, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the outsourcing, which has also brought considerable benefits to the development of other U.S. companies.

Joseph’s team reminds that if the U.S. company is not operating well, a detailed and realistic business plan will go a long way. Letting the immigration officer clearly understand the future direction of the company and the potential for a turnaround will mitigate the adverse effects of the company’s losses and reverse the unfavorable situation of the application. Therefore, L-1 companies should communicate with their attorneys so that they can have a comprehensive understanding of the company’s situation and develop a business plan that is consistent with the company’s growth. Under the current Trump policy, the difficulty of L-1 has increased significantly, and a template business plan will have a negative impact on the L-1 application.

2. Identify the causes of failure and not to repeat them.
Mr. Wang was so busy with his daily work that he left his previous L-1 extension to his former attorney and did not ask about it himself. After his case failed, he did not understand what went wrong because he had little knowledge about L-1, and his application was rejected without even receiving a notice of replacement. Based on the L-1 extension materials provided by Mr. Wang, we were surprised to find that the previous attorney had only submitted a short 4-page boilerplate attorney letter for his application, with the list of documents alone taking up half of the space. The “mother-son” relationship between the U.S. company and the domestic company, as well as Mr. Wang’s executive responsibilities, were also briefly mentioned in a few sentences. The supporting documents attached to the petition were not accompanied by any explanation, but simply a stack of materials. With such a perfunctory L-1 petition, it is no wonder that the immigration officer rejected the petition in a straightforward manner.

After learning the truth, Mr. Wang was very angry and lamented that he had spent money and wasted time, only to have his basket of money go down the drain. For this re-filing, Tsang & Associates prepared not only a 40-page business plan, but also a 20-page letter explaining in detail the “mother-son” relationship between the U.S. and Chinese companies, the company’s business, and the specific executive responsibilities of Mr. Wang in the U.S. and China. Mr. Wang’s business, the specific executive responsibilities in the U.S. and China, and other key elements.

3. Effective organization to select the best documents.
Because his previous attorney had not requested much documentation from Mr. Wang, he had very little idea of what he needed to do to prepare for his reapplication. When we sent Mr. Wang the list of documents for his L-1 petition, he was surprised because the list of documents for his previous L-1 extension was only one page long, while the list of documents for his L-1 petition was six pages long, with very detailed instructions on the document requirements.

Mr. Wang’s company collected a lot of data according to the list of documents and sent it to us. Tsang & Associates’ clerical team then selected the most useful documents according to the actual needs and arranged them in the order of argumentation, so that the supporting materials and the attorney’s letter, as well as the business plan, would complement and support each other to enhance the persuasiveness of the application.

The immigration officer has a limited amount of time to consider each case, and an experienced immigration officer will already know the key points of the case and will focus on several parts of the supporting documents to see if they are consistent with the attorney’s letter and business plan. Therefore, submitting all of the unscreened documents to create the illusion of a “large” and “complete” application will not get you through.

OUTCOME
After thorough preparation, Tsang & Associates filed Mr. Wang’s L-1 petition at the end of January 2020, opting for expedited processing, and on the 14th day, Mr. Tsang received an email from USCIS approving the petition, and a week later received a paper approval notice, approving the two-year L-1 as we had requested. Mr. Wang and the U.S. company were overjoyed and thanked us for our professional services, which enabled Mr. Wang to return to the U.S. company to save his business and allow the company to grow and develop as originally planned. At the same time, Mr. Wang also lamented that if he had found Zandikai & Associates for the L-1 extension earlier, he would have taken a lot less trouble.

After EB-5, L-1 multinational company manager applications have become popular in China, and many guests hope to come to the U.S. as soon as possible through the L-1 route. 2018 began to significantly increase the difficulty of L-1 applications, and some of the unsuccessful L-1s have switched to O-1 outstanding talents, F-1 students, etc. However, due to information inequality, domestic guests’ understanding of L-1 is basically still stuck in the situation of a few years ago: they thought they could come to the U.S. to open a company and produce some basic information about the company to do L-1, and some of them are even dependent on it; they jumped into L-1 without knowing the truth and invested a lot of money, not to mention that now the strict criteria often result in rejection, and the guests cannot obtain the status and regret too much. Therefore, we would like to remind those who intend to apply for L-1 to do so. Therefore, we remind our clients who intend to apply for L-1/EB-1C to learn more about the application, consult with their attorney to discuss the application options and feasibility, and obtain the correct information to make sure they can meet the requirements before starting. If you are interested in applying for L-1 or EB-1C, you are welcome to contact Tsang & Associates to schedule an appointment for consultation.

*To protect customer privacy, customer names are pseudonyms.