President of Auto-parts Company Receives L-1 Extension in 2 Weeks

Year: November 2018
Nationality: Chinese
Beneficiary : Mr. Feng (female)
Company Industry: Auto Parts
China Company: Established in 2013, 30 employees
US company: founded in 2016 in California with 9 employees
Beneficiary Position: President of US company

BACKGROUND

Ms. Feng started her business from college, founded her auto parts company in 2013, and after years of hard work is now a woman entrepreneur with hundreds of millions of dollars. Ms. Feng led the company to export its products to the United States, Europe, Australia, Africa and other parts of the world. In order to make the company go international, Ms. Feng came to the United States to set up a subsidiary in California at the end of 2016, and later applied for a one-year L-1 work visa to work in the United States, which will expire in December 2018.

Under Trump’s new policy, applications are becoming more difficult, and Feng was very worried when she saw her circle of friends’ L-1 extensions fail one by one; on the recommendation of her friends, she came to Tsang & Associates in September 2018 to consult on L-1 extension matters, and then formally appointed us. After nearly 2 months of intensive preparation by Tsang’s team, we helped her straighten out her company’s situation and information, including acquiring a company during the period, filing the extension application in mid-November, and approving it directly after 15 days without any additional documents (RFE).

• Time constraint: Feng’s first L-1 will expire in December 2018, and she requires an extension result before the expiration date, less than 2 months from commissioning to delivery.


• Feng U.S. company operation: Feng only arrived in the United States in March 2018 to carry out business, due to the first arrival of manpower and insufficient, from finding offices, site selection warehouse, recruiting, exhibitors are very hard, but the results are not very effective, the company only left 3 employees, short-term can not reverse the loss situation, a turn to the second half of the year to face the problem of extension.


• Acquisition of a company: Mr. Feng wanted to acquire a company before the extension, this company is far away from the U.S. East, although the company is not large but also need to go through due diligence, valuation, negotiation of conditions, signing the transfer and other links, far away from the two places brought difficulties in communication, and the other party in the short term, many documents are not available, shareholders have different views, uncertainty factors are many.

• Document preparation: Mr. Feng was very busy and often traveled between China and the United States, so he did not have time to prepare the L-1 extension documents until late, and assigned a secretary to cooperate with the provision of data, which needed to be sorted out and processed after receipt, and a lot of Chinese data needed to be translated, so he needed to work overtime to achieve the expected time target of the client.

KEYS TO SUCCESS

– Acquiring company.
Joseph Tsang communicated with the person in charge of the other company and the accountant by email and telephone for many times, and determined the terms of the acquisition and drafted the purchase agreement and sent it to the other party, but the other party’s shareholders temporarily raised different opinions and hired their own lawyers, which slowed down the process. Mr. Feng asked for an extension to add the company, but on the other hand, he wanted to use the best terms to purchase the company, the two sides tug of war, seeing the delivery date approaching day by day, and finally the lawyers of both sides finally agreed after several telephone talks, and completed the signing and payment in the last week before the delivery, and received the data of the company into the L-1 extension application three days ago, and the number of employees increased to 9.

– Letter of explanation of application, preparation of business plan.
While talking about the M&A, Joseph Tsang led the business group to prepare the application letter and business plan. Since the business situation in the U.S. was not as good as expected, the business plan became particularly important. After understanding Feng’s general plan for the U.S. company and market, Mr. Tsang’s team, including colleagues with MBA background, used their expertise to prepare a beautiful, concrete and executable business plan for Feng’s company, so that USCIS would understand the scale and outlook of Feng’s entire company and be willing to give Feng more time in the U.S. to realize her business She was willing to give Feng more time to realize her business ambitions in the United States.

The letter of explanation is particularly important, as there are hundreds of L-1 supporting documents (hundreds to thousands of pages), how can the immigration officer make a quick judgment in a short period of time with a comprehensive understanding of the application? The L-1 petition cover letter prepared by Mr. Zang’s team is usually 20-30 pages, or even 40-50 pages, explaining clearly the operation of the two companies in China and the United States, the applicant’s background, the applicant’s position, job duties, and how he or she will manage the company as an executive, etc. in a comprehensive and focused manner. Some L-1 petitions only have a few pages of cover letter, without the opportunity to show the whole application focus, all the data to the immigration officer to check, the results can be imagined.

– To certify managerial/executive positions.
The L-1 is now much more difficult and the chances of a retroactive filing (RFE) are much higher, regardless of whether it is a new company application or an L-1 extension. The USCIS often questions the managerial/executive position of the applicant, to prove that the position held in the Chinese company meets the managerial/executive requirements, the position in the U.S. company must also meet. The previous practice of providing only basic documents such as employment certificates, employment contracts, business cards, pay slips, tax returns, etc. is no longer sufficient to meet the current USCIS audit standards.

Feng was able to avoid the need for additional documents, and to a large extent, when we explained her President position and job content, we reproduced in detail and specifically how she led the development of companies on both sides of the border, rather than just providing proof of employment, employment contracts, business cards, pay slips, tax returns, etc. The practice of providing these basic documents no longer meets the current USCIS audit standards.

– Sorting and gauging of supporting materials.
Mr. Feng’s Chinese company already had a certain scale and sufficient data, which needed to be screened favorably or revised, and a lot of data had to be translated into English in the short term; the American company only had a prototype, and needed inspiration and guidance on how to prepare the data item by item, including the drafting of some of the company’s documents. The Chinese lawyers and bilingual legal assistants in Mr. Zang’s team played an important role, and through many communications and guidance with the client, they finally prepared and completed more than 1200 pages of extension materials, which provided correct and strong support for each argument in the explanatory letter.

– Application preparation customization and synchronization.
Why did the extension change lawyers? One of the reasons is that the client found out that the original attorney applied the template and the application data even had the information of the previous applicant, which was very uneasy.

Zang’s team has taken on many applications for change of counsel in the middle of the process, or for appeal or reapplication after the original application was denied. Each application is unique, and under the current policy, it is difficult to apply a template approach to applications. Only with a comprehensive and thorough understanding of the client’s situation can we provide a customized solution to truly solve the client’s problem. Mr. Feng was in a hurry to prepare for this extension, so we invested a lot of manpower to do all the above work in different groups, so that we could achieve the best result within the limited time.

OUTCOME
In mid-November, Tsang & Associates filed the L-1 extension application for Mr. Feng, and on the 15th day, the attorney received an email approval notice. A week later, we received the original paper approval and the L-2 for Mr. Feng’s child was approved at the same time. After receiving the news, Mr. Feng was incredulous and repeatedly confirmed with us that it was really approved directly! Mr. Feng repeatedly expressed his gratitude to Mr. Zang’s team for their dedication and dedication to her, so that she could take the easy way out and get the extension so quickly without worrying about the L-1 being interrupted and the company being shut down, and then she could start the EB-1C green card application as scheduled and resolve her status concerns as soon as possible.


*To protect customer privacy, customer names are pseudonyms.