How did I get US L1 visa

It was a long way for me. The plan to develop business in the USA appeared back in 2019. Then there was a forced break for the pandemic, then the collection of documents, synchronization with the company’s goals — as a result, I only managed to get a visa in 2022. I hope this note will help you get through the process more quickly if you consider running a business in the US.

L-1A and L-1B visas are available for temporary intracompany transferees who work in managerial positions or have specialized knowledge. Detailed https://www.uscis.gov/forms/explore-my-options/l-visas-l-1a-and-l-1b-for-temporary-workers

Features of L1 visa:

• It is issued for one year with an annual renewal of up to 7 years.
• If you have an existing business, the package of documents is smaller, and the registration is cheaper than the O1 visa.
• Allows the family to stay and work in the US with the main applicant
  Does not impose restrictions on time spent in the United States. You can leave at your own discretion
• Allows you to get an SSN, open a bank account, get a driver’s license, etc.
• You pay taxes in the US while you are in the US and are a tax resident by the number of days you are in the US, but you do not become a permanent tax resident, unlike the Green Card process and citizenship.

Roadmap

1. You have an operational business (not in Russia)
2. Opening a branch of your business in the USA
3. Preparation of Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker.
4. Obtaining an Approval Notice on Form I-129
5. Create Form DS-160 for Visa Entry
6. Finding a consulate with slots for non-residents
7. Create an account with this consulate
8. Adding yourself and your family
9. Visa fee payment
10. Appoint an interview
11. Schedule Group Appointment
12. At the Embassy
13. Useful links

1. Main company

You must have an operating business outside of the United States. You must have worked in this company in an executive position for more than 1 year, and your total experience in a managerial position is more than 3 years. When filing Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, you must verify this.

After June 2022, it is necessary to ensure that you and other shareholders of the head company are not located in the territory of the Russian Federation. And of course, in the current situation, a business from Russia will not be suitable as a starting point.

2. Establishing New Offices

Foreign employers seeking to send an employee to the United States as an executive or manager to establish a new office must show:

They have a physical location for the new office; the WeWork agreement is enough

Generally have been working for a qualifying organization abroad for one continuous year within the three years immediately before your admission to the United States

We founded the company in the state of Delaware; we turned to lawyers. The procedure is quite simple, Initial Resolution Incorporation is issued, lawyers file an application, confirmation of registration of this application arrives — and that’s it, the company is formally established.

Further, depending on your situation, you will need to prepare several internal documents, including the appointment of directors and others. For the needs of the visa, it is necessary to make a Board Resolution in which you are sent to work in a new company.

To open a bank account, you need to get an EIN. The difficulty is that a US resident must submit it. Here we also turned to consultants, filled out the form, and received an EIN in 2 days.

The account was opened in Mercury. Everything is online. A non-resident of the Russian Federation applied, so I cannot say whether they will open it upon application from the owner of the Russian passport, we did not need to check. An account was opened in a couple of days.

3. Prepare formI-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker.

We started collecting documents and preparing the form in advance before the establishment of the company. By the time the company was established, most of the documents for the form were ready. We also turned to consultants.

By the way, opening a company, obtaining an EIN, and filing a petition are three different consultants, such a narrow specialization.

From the main package of documents:

• Applicant data (CV, employment contracts, proof of income, diplomas, etc.)
• Data of the head company (constituent, reporting)
• Evidence of your leadership position (data on the employees you manage)
• Business plan for 5 years for a US company

The list includes a lot more, but it’s not a problem to put it all together for a real business. For one month, it is quite possible to prepare everything.

When everything was ready, we opened a company, and lawyers submitted documents. There is a premium service, according to which the term for considering a petition is 15 days if we take the standard — like three months. Considering the international situation, we decided not to experiment with the timing. The premium fee is $2500.

The exact amount for the entire service, I can not report, but in my case, it is less than the O1 visa. When I calculated the budget for preparing documents for the O1 visa, I got $ 30k, which came out much less.

4. Obtaining an I-129 Approval Notice

We received an email confirmation within 5 days. Then they waited another week for an electronic document form (for further steps, the petition number was enough, even the scan did not have to wait).

It seemed that the way was already done, but it was only the middle of the road.

The next step is to get a visa. Department of homeland security and consulates are different institutions. Hence two different processes.

The original Approval Notice is not required for obtaining a visa, but it is better to have one. In my case, FedEx delivery from the USA to Baku was 30 days, not fast. (20 days after sending, the tracker has not moved apparently, I will pick up this document already in the USA)

5. Create Form DS-160 for Visa Entry

The official US websites contain a lot of information. It is complicated to cover it. Here I give my experience; please refer to the official sites for getting official data.

Form DS-160 (questionnaire) is needed in any case for submission to the consulate of any city. The form must be completed for each family member. You will receive a confirmation page at the end; you must save it and take it to the embassy. You will need the DS-160 number throughout to record your interview. Here you can create it https://ceac.state.gov/GenNIV/Default.aspx

6. Search for a consulate with slots for non-residents

Initially, I thought I could apply in Baku, where I have a residence permit. But somehow, I didn’t see that the consulate was still closed due to Covid. I saw it when I started filling out the form.

My question is, where do I sign up? It is important to note that most consulates do not accept non-residents at all, and places are limited in some countries.

Here is a check of the processing time https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/wait-times.html

But it should not be trusted; at least the system shows information for residents, not considering the slots for non-residents, which may not exist.

The difficulty is that to find out the actual date of the interview; you need to reach the stage of paying the visa fee, pay it, and only then you get to the registration page. They show you the date first, but at the last step, you note that you are a non-resident, and the date changes a lot. But even according to the preliminary data, conclusions can be drawn. If April 2023 is shown in advance (this was the case in Istanbul), you should not even start.

7. Create a consulate account

For each account, unique emails are required. Therefore, stock up on emails to check the dates and create an entry.

There are 2 types of interfaces for recording an interview. As I understand it, embassies serve different services and, therefore, different interfaces.

Country selection https://www.ustraveldocs.com/

8. Adding yourself and family members

Once you’ve signed up in one place and added yourself and your family, you can’t add those same people elsewhere. How to check dates in different countries?

Just change some of the symbols of the last name and passport in the account that you don’t need yet, then you can add the correct data to the desired account. Before payment of the fee and before the appointment of an interview, all data are preliminary, they can be easily changed.

Once, when I twisted the data like this and endlessly tried variations of the entry, my account was blocked for 72 hours. Unblocked later, it is okay.

9. Visa fee payment

Of course, you need a regular card for payment, not a Russian one. Interestingly, you must wait almost a day for the payment to go through in Kazakhstan. In Poland, it passes instantly.

After paying the visa fee, the payment number is rigidly fixed for a specific account and person. Using the payment in another account will no longer be possible, even if it is from the same embassy. Why did I need this? In order to record not the whole group at once, but one by one, this way the dates were closer.

Paid visa fees are non-refundable. And you will not be able to use them in another country’s consulate.

10. Make an appointment for an interview

When you add family members, the date immediately shifts forward because the system is looking for slots for several people, even if they are children who should not come to the consulate.

First, I tried in Kazakhstan. It was the beginning of July. Kazakhstan is convenient in that no Schengen is required. In Almaty, it was previously shown on September 13, Nur-Sultan on July 24. Joyfully, I added all the children, paid a visa for $ 190 for each, and at the last step, I only got slots in September. Sadness. I didn’t sign up. So if you make records in different countries simultaneously, there is a high probability that somewhere, it will fly off and be canceled, or it will not let you record at all.

Of course, I heard about Poland, but I thought that work with non-residents was curtailed there. Then I found information that everything works. There are even chatbots for recording, but they are only for tourist visas and not suitable for me.

I looked at Warsaw, but it was only September (2 months from the submission date). Being in some despair and preparing to wait another 2–3 months, once again sorting through the options, I accidentally stumbled upon the Krakow option. And he immediately offered me the end of July — fantastic. But again, when adding the whole family, the deadline was leaving in September.

Then I booked myself for July 27. And then, I created a separate account for each child and wrote them down separately for 3, 4 and … August 10. August 10 made me sad. I’ll have to hang out in Krakow for almost 3 weeks.

11. Schedule a Group Appointment

The account has a Schedule Group Appointment button. According to the description, it is not clear who this option is suitable for, but I have already decided to try everything. I sent a request and indicated that I would like to include my children in the group. After 2 days, miracle received a reply that my request was approved. But to enroll them in a group, the system required me to cancel the already assigned personal entries that I made with such difficulty.

Here I found that you can call the consulate. Here is the link https://www.ustraveldocs.com/pl/ru/contact-us

The consultant, speaking in Russian, explained that there is a separate queue for the group, but the dates of the nearest slots are unknown. Tricky moment, to record, you must cancel existing appointments. What to do? Stay in Krakow for 3 weeks or take a chance and try to group everyone together. I decided to take a chance, canceled, added children and voila — the system gave an error that my group was more than approved. How did it happen?

Again through the contact center, I applied for a fix. 2 days later, a letter notified me that my children had been manually scheduled for my visitation date. Success. But Nursultan could not be avoided. My wife does not have a Schengen, so I enrolled her in Nur-Sultan, at the end of August.

12. At the embassy

Krakow is a beautiful city. The consulate is a small cozy building with about 6 windows inside.

On the appointed day, you wait on the street in front of the entrance. The consular officer comes out and checks the appointments against the list and issues a pass. It would be best if you did not take bags with you, there is nowhere to drop them off, you will also have to drop off your phone and smartwatch at the entrance. There are small boxes for them. After the screening, you go inside. Several employees take turns studying the documents. In my case, at first, they had a question about why Baku was indicated in the questionnaires. They were repairing something; then they could not find it in the Approval Notice system. I had a copy, of course.

As a result, my passports were taken away from me, and they said that it would take time to receive confirmations through internal systems. Right now, they do not approve the visa, they issued a notice that the visa was denied until the required package of documents was provided.

Such an unpleasant piece of paper, it seems not a refusal, but it is written that the refusal, which can be resolved positively.

Well, I left to wait for notification of the readiness of the visa. You can check it out here.

Visa Status Check https://ceac.state.gov/CEACStatTracker/Status.aspx?App=NIV

At first, the status was generally Refusal. The next day changed to the Administrative process, which can take a few weeks. Hoped for the best.

On the second day, I received an SMS that the passport was ready, the number of the child’s passport was indicated. I went to the pickup address that I previously indicated for pickup. I got on a scooter in 15 minutes, such a small Mail Box office. There I was given the cherished passports with L2 visas, but only children’s passports. My passport is still at the consulate. If they gave it to the children, I thought they would definitely give it to me. But I had to stay in Krakow for another 4 days.

It turns out that visas for children were issued after 1 day: on Wednesday, they filed, on Friday afternoon, they took them. My passport was issued after 3 working days.

The Consulate employees in Krakow worked perfectly, carefully studied my case, helped everywhere, and considered everything on time. All systems also worked well; statuses were updated, email and SMS notifications came.

13. Useful Links

List of documents for obtaining a passport
https://www.ustraveldocs.com/kz/ru/retrieving-your-documents/#document-required-passport-pickup

Visa Status Check
https://ceac.state.gov/CEACStatTracker/Status.aspx?App=NIV

Country selection https://www.ustraveldocs.com/
https://evisaforms.state.gov/Instructions/SchedulingSystem.asp

Check time https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/wait-times.html