Hello, this is Matsui of IMS Legal Professional Corporation. Last night, the sudden big shake and the emergency earthquake alert from my cell phone made my heart throb, but was everyone okay? We must beware of the aftershocks predicted to continue for a week.
In this blog, I would like to talk about the U.S. L visa, about which we recently received many inquiries. The L visa, the so-called "intra-company transferee visa", is the most suitable visa for employees of an international company transferring within the same group. There are many kinds of L visas, but many companies dispatching expatriates to the U.S. use the L Blanket visa. Initially, before applying for an L visa at the U.S. Embassy/Consulate, you must apply for an approval of a petition at the U.S. Immigration Bureau. In other words, you must obtain a petition approved by the Immigration otherwise you cannot apply for a visa. However, for large companies that frequently reassign their employees, economic activities will be greatly hindered if they always had to wait for this time-consuming Immigration inspection. Therefore, companies that meet certain criteria can obtain an L visa for the whole company. In that way, approved petitions for individual employees applying for the visa are not needed. For companies, there are great benefits for using the L blanket visa.
Things to Note
There are many expiration dates that you must be aware of for the L visa, which is very complicating, and it is possible to unintentionally overstay if you are not completely conscious of them. Those holding L visas should bear in mind the following 3 expiration dates;
- Expiration date of the L visa: Normally, 5 years from the issued date
- PED (Petition Expiration Date): The period permitted to work in the U.S. Normally, the expiration date is 2 or 3 years after the date you start working. For L blanket visas, the date is written on the lower right part of the I-129S document and visa.
- Expiration date of the I-94: The period of stay determined on your entry to the U.S. Formally, a card was attached to your passport, but now, you can check it online. The period of stay is also specified on the stamp you get on your passport when entering the U.S. You must make sure that the I-94 record online and the date on the passport are the same, right after your entry. The period of stay is determined according to the expiration date of your passport, so especially for children accompanying their parents, whose length of their passport expiration date is short, you must be extra careful.
PED, No. 2 above, does not exist in other visas, so it is extremely difficult to understand. Even if you still have plenty time until your visa expires, after the PED, you cannot work inside the U.S. So even if you do have enough time until the expiration date of your visa, you must re-apply and obtain a new work visa before the PED.
Note: The I-129S form required for the L visa application has recently been revised. Please be aware that the applications submitted on and after November 17th will not be accepted unless the form has “Edition 09/09/21” written on the bottom left corner. This form is revised frequently, so I would recommend applicants to always use the latest edition.
For more information, please contact us below ↓
https://imsvisa.support/en/contact/
