Read the general business expansion overview
Hypothetical example: an Innisfil freight brokerage wants to open an American branch and send its operations director. To keep costs down the owners plan to use a coworking membership and a mail-forwarding address for the first year. A new-office petition is approved for an initial period of one year and is expected to be supported by evidence including secured physical premises for the new office, so the accommodation decision is not merely a facilities matter; it is part of what the petition has to show. Hypothetical example: Anders, a commercial-window distributor, must decide whether a virtual address can support the planned office before moving a manager. The business decision is whether the U.S. operation has enough committed premises, funding, and hiring detail to support the claimed role after the first year. Incorporation is only one early step; the file should describe an actual enterprise capable of developing into the proposed managerial or executive structure.
Secured premises is an evidentiary requirement, not a formality
The regulatory expectation for a new office includes evidence that sufficient physical premises to house the new office have been secured. A lease or purchase agreement in the entity's name, describing a defined space suitable for the work the office will do, is the ordinary way of showing that. A membership agreement granting access to shared desks may not describe premises the entity has secured at all, and a mail-forwarding address plainly does not. The question to put to counsel is not whether coworking is ever acceptable but what this particular office needs in order to do the work described in the petition. Collect the lease or other premises record, business-plan assumptions, financial support, and a first-year staffing schedule. Each item should agree on the location, launch timing, and functions. A mail service cannot explain where employees will work or where business operations will occur.
The premises should match the business being described
A brokerage that describes an office with staff, telephone operations and record storage, and then evidences a single shared desk, has created an inconsistency inside its own petition. Adjudicators read the whole file together. Whatever accommodation is chosen, the description of the operation, the staffing plan, the budget and the lease should tell one coherent story. If the true plan is a very small first-year presence, it is better to describe that accurately and show premises appropriate to it than to describe an ambitious operation the premises could not house. The transferee must have qualifying foreign employment with a related organization during the required period, and the organizations must have a documented qualifying relationship. New-office planning does not excuse a gap in either foundation.
Plan for what the first year has to produce
A new office is approved initially for one year. The foreign entity must continue doing business, the U.S. operation must become active, the entities must maintain a qualifying relationship, and the transferee must have one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the preceding three years. For an L-1A manager or executive, the evidence must also show that the new office will support a primarily managerial or executive position within that first year. Owners who treat the year as a grace period tend to reach its end with premises, staffing and activity that do not match what they filed. Set a review date well before the first-year approval expires. By then, actual payroll, revenue, contracts, premises, and the organization chart should show that the transferee moved into the claimed level of responsibility.
What else is on your mind?
Does being a business owner or director qualify me for L-1A?What employment history should an L-1 transfer review cover?What makes a new-office L-1A case different?Why does an L-2 spouse’s admission record matter for work?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.