Once the applicable petition-and-admission steps are complete. A Canadian citizen may travel with a USCIS-approved petition, and an eligible Canadian L applicant may also present Form I-129 and supporting evidence through the applicable designated port-of-entry procedure; confirm the current filing route before travel. A new-office case has a one-year initial approval period.
The calendar is set by the corporate paperwork
Three clocks run in an L-1A case. The first is document gathering: obtaining share registers, tax filings and payroll records from two companies in two countries can take weeks, especially where a recent acquisition has not yet produced clean records. The second is USCIS processing, which varies by service center and can be shortened by premium processing for a fee.
The third is the transferee's own year abroad: if the qualifying twelve months will only be complete on a certain date, the petition cannot be filed before it. Plan the resignation from the Québec employer to follow the approval notice, not the filing. If the U.S.
entity has been doing business for less than a year, the petition is a new-office case approved for one year only, and the group should plan for an extension petition with evidence of growth before that year ends.