IN THIS GUIDE · Keep a wood-treatment specialist’s client-site placement inside the L-1B rules
Start with the L-1B eligibility and application overview
Define the knowledge as the company’s, not the industry’s
Every kiln operator understands drying; what makes this specialist’s knowledge specialized is her role in developing the company’s proprietary schedules, its quality-control tolerances and its treatment documentation. The file should show that with dated procedure manuals she authored, training records where she taught others and a comparison with the small number of colleagues who share the knowledge. General experience with lumber grading, however long, is not enough.Pair each claimed knowledge item with a dated internal record, such as a controlled manual, change history, training register, or validation result. Vague assertions about expertise do not reveal why the knowledge is distinctive.
Write the customer agreement so control is real
An offsite placement is permissible only if the U.S. subsidiary, not the customer, controls the specialist’s work. The services agreement should state that the subsidiary sets her tasks, evaluates her performance, pays her and can withdraw her, and that the customer receives a defined deliverable — installed schedules, trained staff, validated output — rather than a worker to assign. Avoid clauses that let the customer direct her daily duties or add her to its shift roster.Read the customer contract beside the proposed assignment. Invoices, reporting lines, and acceptance milestones should show a service controlled by the petitioner, rather than a person supplied to fill another company’s shift.
Confirm the relationship and the year
The Canadian company and the U.S. subsidiary must both be doing business, with the ownership shown in registers. The specialist’s continuous year must be with the Canadian company, documented by payroll. If she was hired as a contractor before becoming an employee, only the employment period counts, and the file should be clear about the transition date.Verify the foreign employment interval from payroll deposits and tax documents before drafting a support letter. This prevents an avoidable disagreement about when employee status, rather than contractor status, began.
Respect the five-year limit and plan the spouse’s status
L-1B is initially granted for up to three years and can be extended to a maximum of five. A placement of eighteen months fits, but a later transfer to another customer would need the same offsite analysis. Her spouse in L-2 is work-authorized incident to status; unmarried children under twenty-one may study but not work.Create a five-year status calendar before promising a multi-customer deployment. A new engagement may require its own control analysis even when the first assignment was carefully documented.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.