L1 US Visa, One Step to Green Cards

L1 visa is issued to top managers of foreign companies that open a representative office in the United States. This visa allows you to transfer a manager to an employee in the United States, where he will live and work in a branch of his company. Having received this visa, an employee can get visas for his wife and children and they can legally come and live in the USA. A year later, the employee must provide the migration service with the results of the company's work in the USA and, in case of positive results, obtain an extension of the visa for 2 years and the right to apply for the Green Card. In total, the visa L1 can live and work in the United States for 7 years.

The main problem that the L1 visa solves, You can live and work with her in the USA without leaving for at least 1 year. With a B1 / B2 visa you cannot be in the country for more than 6 months. And if you spend 5-6 months and go to Russia, then you may have difficulty obtaining a new visa. And oh, what a hemorrhoid, if you have scheduled meetings here, a lot of things and you did not plan to manage American business from Russia.

I came to America on a B1 / B2 visa in August 2011 to open here an office for my company Atilekt . A couple of months later, when I bought an apartment in San Jose (for details on buying real estate in the US, read here ) one day on Deep Dive , I heard about the L1 visa and realized that this is what you need to do business in the US and not travel to Russia every 2 months.
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A friend of mine said that you could go to Mexico and, upon returning to the USA, get a new migration card for 6 months, so I decided not to deal with this issue and put it off until the trip to Cancun scheduled for January.

To my surprise, I was not given a new migration card on my return to San Francisco, explaining that leaving and entering for 1 week on a B1 / B2 visa does not provide for issuing a new migration card.

Fuck I thought. It was necessary to urgently make a visa or return to Russia.
And I naturally decided to do a visa.

I called my real estate agent from Los Angeles and she recommended her partner, the law firm Karasik Law Firm, which is run by our compatriot Olga Karasik.

I called Ole and explained the situation.
- In a month my tenure in the USA ends.
- A month later ends visa B1 / B2.
- I have not registered an American company
- There is no document for a new visa.

Olya said that we will all have time, if I have time to collect the documents.
I turned off facebook, twitter, unsubscribed from all notifications from Eventbright, Meetup and stopped going to all parties.
For 20 days I practically did not leave the house, stopped going to the gym, replacing it with yoga classes. Once a week we with my roommates Alexey and Nikita from the Atcontent.com project went to the Chinese Lion Market supermarket and bought a full basket of products.

First of all, within 3 days we registered Atilekt, Inc in the state of Delaware.
It was the simplest thing to do.
Then they sent a request to the California authorities for permission to conduct business in the state of California. A few days later, with some difficulty, I opened a bank account. Read more about how to open an account in the American Bank here .

And began my epic collection of documents.
Considering that only 20 days remained before the expiration of my stay, I had only one attempt to apply and get Pending status, during which you can legally be in the United States. If I had done something wrong, had not prepared the documents correctly, forgot to translate some documents or forgot to provide something, they would simply refuse to accept the documents and asked to collect documents further and I would leave Russia, but experience shows my acquaintances ( Qsoft hello), getting a visa in Russia is much more complicated than in the USA.

It was necessary to collect documents confirming that the Russian company exists, makes a profit and is able to finance the American office until it comes to self-sufficiency. In addition, it was necessary to provide all mentions of the company in the media. The organizational chart of Russian and American companies with an obvious link between them. Photos, official duties, biographies, copies of diplomas of employees in the Russian office. Tax returns for the last 3 years, statements from banks and a bunch of documents that needed to be not only collected, but also translated into English. Lease of the US office. Contract with at least one American employee and payroll confirmation.

When I collected all the documents and sent them to the translator for evaluation, I received a $ 4,500 assessment and two weeks for translation.
There was no desire to pay such money for the transfer and there was no time to wait for 2 weeks. Having looked at the documents with the lawyer, we determined that we will translate completely, and that we will simply sign, and give a general description of what is in this document or in the photograph. Thus, we were able to reduce the cost of translation to $ 2000, and the time for the week. The correct decision was to choose a translator who has been working with a lawyer for more than a year and can quickly send parts of the translated documents to a lawyer for verification.

It remained to still prepare a business plan.
I also did not have any time for this, so I accepted the offer of partner lawyer Terry, who developed the 3-year Atilekt business plan for a reasonable price.
On February 13, 11 days before the expiration of my migration card, we submitted documents and a couple of days later we received confirmation that everything was OK and my petition received Pending status.

After a month of nervous waiting for a decision, we received a request for additional documents. To my surprise, we were given 2 months to collect the documents. One of the main requirements was the fulfillment of the investment plan of the Russian campaign, the transfer of money from the Russian account to the account of an American company to support the American office. We finished collecting the documents and sent them to the migration service on May 13, 2 days before the expiration of the allotted time limit.

June 4, a month before the biggest holiday in the United States, Independence Day, I received an email with a positive response to an application for an L1 visa.

Now I can get a SSN (social security number) and Driver License and live in the US as a white person, because if you don’t have an SSN, then you, for example, Verizon will not sell your cell phone. You will not be able to get a discount card at Target stores. And a lot of useful things you will not be available.

There are, of course, other ways to get an SSN, but about this some other time.