Read the general business expansion overview
Hypothetical example: Pascale owns a seafood export brokerage in Stratford and wants to open an American sales office with cold-storage space near her largest customers, moving herself across to run it. Where the American entity has been doing business for less than a year, the first approval is limited to twelve months. Most of the planning attention goes into winning that year. The harder document is the one filed at the end of it, and what it will say is decided by choices made now.
What the first petition already has to show
Three things beyond the ordinary requirements. Sufficient physical premises for the new office must be secured, which means a signed lease or purchase rather than a shortlist of buildings. The petitioner must show that the American entity will support an executive or managerial position within one year, which is a statement about hiring, revenue and structure rather than an aspiration. And the usual foundations still apply: a qualifying relationship between the Canadian and American entities, both eventually doing business, and one continuous year of Pascale's own qualifying employment abroad inside the previous three.
What the extension will actually ask about
The second filing is not a renewal of the first; it asks what happened. Did the office open, did it trade, were staff hired, does the organization now support a role that is genuinely managerial or executive rather than one person doing everything. A first-year plan that promised four hires and delivered none will be read against itself. Pascale should therefore write the first-year plan as something she intends to execute and can afford, not as the most impressive version an adviser could defend, because the plan becomes the standard she is measured against twelve months later.
The failure mode is an entity that exists only on paper
Doing business means the regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services. A registered company with a bank account, a lease and no transactions does not meet it, and neither does an office that exists to hold a status. The practical guard is to make the American entity trade in its own name from the outset: its own contracts with customers, its own invoices, its own payroll, its own storage agreements. Where the Canadian brokerage keeps billing every customer and the American office merely coordinates, the extension file will struggle to show an operating business, whatever the letterhead says.
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.