{"id":503,"date":"2012-08-13T22:23:22","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T04:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/?p=503"},"modified":"2026-08-15T23:19:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T05:19:14","slug":"l1a-new-office-petition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/?p=503","title":{"rendered":"L1A New Office Petition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>My brother and I have a company in Brazil.\u00a0We have 12 employees and an annual turnover of about $500,000 USD.\u00a0I want to come to open an office in the US using the L1 visa.\u00a0Is this possible for a small company like ours?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While it certainly makes the case easier if your company were larger, the issue in your case would be how to show that your role in the US enterprise is managerial or executive in capacity.\u00a0The number of employees in the foreign parent company or in the new US enterprise is not dispositive and we have handled many L1A new office applications where the L1 visa applicant will be the sole employee for the first year of operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My brother and I have a company in Brazil.\u00a0We have 12 employees and an annual turnover of about $500,000 USD.\u00a0I want to come to open an office in the US using the L1 visa.\u00a0Is this possible for a small company like ours? While it certainly makes the case easier if your company were larger, the &#8230; <a title=\"L1A New Office Petition\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/?p=503\" aria-label=\"Read more about L1A New Office Petition\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[218],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-l-1a-visa","tag-l-1a-visa"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>L1A New Office Petition - US Immigration Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/?p=503\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"L1A New Office Petition - US Immigration Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My brother and I have a company in Brazil.\u00a0We have 12 employees and an annual turnover of about $500,000 USD.\u00a0I want to come to open an office in the US using the L1 visa.\u00a0Is this possible for a small company like ours? While it certainly makes the case easier if your company were larger, the ... 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