EB-1C green card

EB-1C is decided on what the role actually is, at both companies.

EB-1C is the first-preference green card a multinational company files for an executive or manager. There is no labor certification step, which makes it short on paper and easy to lose on the facts, because the law defines manager and executive more narrowly than any org chart does. This page walks through the requirements with the citations, so you can check every sentence.

Book a consultation

Who you would be working with, and how the work runs

The employment-based categories on this site are all handled here, and they are handled by the same attorney. A company with an H-1B question, a labor certification and a green card to plan does not need three firms, three intakes and three explanations of its own org chart.

There is one attorney at this firm. The person who reads your documents is the person who writes the petition and signs the filing, and two paralegals work the file alongside me. That is not a service promise, it is the shape of the firm, and it is the reason there is nobody for a question to get handed to.

Every matter carries a written checklist: what I need from you, what I am working on now, and what comes next. The filing is built from your own documents, because the facts that decide these cases are specific to one company and one role and no template holds them. The person the case is filed for gets a portal account of their own for documents and status, which keeps their personal papers out of a shared inbox. Fees are flat per matter and staged, quoted in three separate lines: the attorney fee, government filing fees, and other costs.

EB-1C at a glance

No labor certification

The employer files Form I-140 directly. No test of the U.S. labor market, and no Department of Labor stage.
One enterprise, two companies

The U.S. petitioner is the same employer as abroad, or its parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate. Ownership and control, proven with documents.
One year abroad, inside three

The person worked for the foreign entity as a manager or executive for at least one year in the three years before filing.
Defined terms, not titles

Managerial and executive capacity are defined in INA 101(a)(44). The petition is decided on duties, not on the word director or VP.

Is this your situation?

If one of these is close to what your company is planning, the category is worth checking properly.

The company is building out a U.S. entity and a leader is moving with it.: EB-1C is written for this transfer, with one catch companies miss: the U.S. entity must have been doing business for at least one year before it files. A new subsidiary starts the person on L-1 and files EB-1C when the entity has a year of real operations behind it.
Your executive is here on L-1A and the green card question has come up.: L-1A and EB-1C are separate standards on separate forms, and they read closely related facts, so the L-1A file is where an EB-1C case starts. Time in L-1 status is not a legal requirement. What matters is the year abroad and the capacity of the role, on both ends.
The person runs a function rather than a headcount.: The statute recognizes a manager of an essential function, not only a manager of people. Those cases are approvable, and they are the ones where the record works hardest, because it has to show who performs the day-to-day work of the function if not the manager.

“The petition is decided on duties, not on the word director or VP.”

The test

What the law actually requires

All of it is checkable. The statute is INA 203(b)(1)(C), the regulation is 8 CFR 204.5(j), and the definitions doing the real work are in INA 101(a)(44).

Two capacities, one statute

Managerial capacity

Who: A person who manages the organization, a department, a subdivision or a function.
The definition: Supervises professional or managerial staff, or manages an essential function; has authority over personnel decisions or the function; exercises discretion over day-to-day operations.
What the record shows: What is managed, who else performs the work, and what the person decides. A manager of an essential function has to show who does the function's day-to-day work.
Rule: INA 101(a)(44)(A)

Executive capacity

Who: A person who directs the management of the organization or a major component.
The definition: Sets goals and policies, exercises wide latitude in discretionary decision-making, and receives only general supervision from above.
What the record shows: What is directed and what is decided, in the words of the statute rather than the org chart.
Rule: INA 101(a)(44)(B)

Staffing is read against the reasonable needs of the organization and its stage of development, INA 101(a)(44)(C). A thin team is not disqualifying by itself, and the record must show that someone other than the manager performs the work being managed.

The two companies must be one enterprise, in the legal sense

The U.S. petitioner must be the same employer the person worked for abroad, or its parent, branch, subsidiary or affiliate, as 8 CFR 204.5(j)(2) defines those words. It is a question of ownership and control, proven with documents, not of shared branding. The same regulation requires the U.S. entity to have been doing business, meaning the regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services, for at least one year before the petition is filed. The relationship is checked at filing and has to stay intact, so a merger, a sale or a restructure in the middle of a case can change the answer.

The year abroad, inside a three-year window

The person must have worked for the qualifying foreign entity for at least one year in the three years before the petition is filed, and that year must itself have been in a managerial or executive capacity. If the person is already in the United States working for the petitioner, the window is measured from when they entered as a nonimmigrant rather than from the filing date. This requirement decides when a case can start, and it is why the foreign role gets documented as carefully as the U.S. one.

The employer has to show it can pay, and the green card has its own queue

8 CFR 204.5(g)(2) requires the petitioning employer to show it can pay the proffered wage from the priority date until the person becomes a permanent resident, proven with annual reports, federal tax returns or audited financial statements; an employer of a hundred or more workers can use a financial officer's statement. It is tested against the company's own filed numbers, so a small or newly profitable U.S. entity should look at it first. An approved I-140 then gives the person a priority date, their place in the immigrant-visa line. Whether that date is current, by category and country of chargeability, is published every month in the Visa Bulletin of the Department of State, and the last step is adjustment of status inside the United States or an immigrant visa at a consulate.

EB-1C and L-1A are often planned together, and they are separate tests: an L-1A approval does not decide an I-140, and time in L-1 status is not an EB-1C requirement. The pairing works because both read the same underlying facts.

The honest part

What is hard about it

Two things a company should know before it budgets.

Titles carry nothing

A record that describes the role in the language of the statute, what is directed, what is decided, who else does the producing, does the work. A record that recites the org chart invites a request for evidence about what the person actually does all day.

Thin staffing sinks real managers

The statute protects early-stage companies on paper: staffing is read against the reasonable needs of the organization. In practice, the smaller the team, the more precisely the record has to show the line between managing the work and doing it. That is an evidence problem, and it is solvable, but it has to be solved before filing rather than answered afterward.

The clock

Where the calendar comes from

Every clock in an EB-1C belongs to an agency, and every agency publishes its own current numbers. Check those rather than a figure typed onto a law firm page.

USCIS publishes I-140 processing times

The processing-times tool at egov.uscis.gov reports, by form and by office, what is currently being decided. Read it as a description of finished cases, not a date for a case that has not been filed.

Premium processing is a clock, not a different decision

Form I-907 buys a commitment from USCIS to act inside a fixed number of days, published on the USCIS I-907 page, and acting includes a request for evidence as much as an approval. It changes when you hear, not what you hear.

The Visa Bulletin is the queue, published monthly

The Department of State publishes the Visa Bulletin at travel.state.gov, showing which priority dates are current in each category for each country of chargeability. It moves in both directions, it belongs to nobody in the case, and it is why EB-1C planning starts from the person rather than from the form.

Each of those pages belongs to the agency that decides the case and carries the date it was last updated.

The sequence

Where the time actually goes

Here is the order of a case in this category: who acts at each step, and whose clock is running. Two of those clocks are different animals, and telling them apart is most of what people are really asking. A period fixed by regulation is the same this year and next. A backlog is a fact about a queue on one particular day, so this page does not print one. It hands you the agency page where the current figure lives.

You
You and your attorney build the record: the evidence, the letters, the exhibits, the petition itself.
No published figure
This is the one stretch on the list that no agency measures. It moves with what already exists and what still has to be created.
USCIS
USCIS decides the immigrant petition.
Set by the backlogForm I-140
Same tool, same caution: what USCIS publishes describes cases it has already finished, and it is posted per form, per classification and per office.
Premium processing
Premium processing is a paid USCIS service available on this form. For I-140 in this classification, USCIS states a period of 45 business days.
That period stops and starts over from the beginning if USCIS issues a request for evidence, so it buys a faster look at the file rather than a shorter case.
Eligibility is set per form and per classification, and USCIS can change it.
USCIS processing timesCheck the current figure at egov.uscis.gov
Department of State
A visa number has to become available for your preference category and your country of birth.
Set by the backlog
Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens are not in a preference category, so this step does not apply to them. Where it does apply, nobody can shorten it, and for some countries it is the longest step by a distance. The Department of State publishes a bulletin every month.
The visa bulletinCheck the current figure at travel.state.gov
USCIS
The last step happens in one of two places: adjustment of status with USCIS inside the United States, or an immigrant visa interview at a consulate abroad.
Set by the backlogForm I-485
Which one applies depends on where you are and what status you hold, not on preference.
USCIS processing timesCheck the current figure at egov.uscis.gov

Sources and definitions

No published figure: No agency publishes a time for this step. Anyone quoting you one is guessing.
Set by the backlog: How long this step takes depends on the agency's queue that month. The current figure is on the agency's own page, which is why it is not repeated here.

USCIS processing times: Pick the form, the classification and the office. What USCIS posts there is how long it took to finish eight in ten decided cases over the previous six months, refreshed monthly.
The visa bulletin: Published monthly by the Department of State. It tells you whether a visa number is available this month for your category and country of birth.
USCIS premium processing: Which forms and classifications are eligible, what it costs, and the period USCIS states for each of them.

USCIS is U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that decides petitions.
The Department of State runs the consulates and publishes the monthly visa bulletin.

Every stage, form number and period below comes from the agency that owns that step. None of it is this firm's estimate, and none of it is a prediction about your case.

Sources last checked August 16, 2026.

The links go to live government pages, so what you find there will be newer than that.

The employer page, for the whole track

How employer-sponsored work is structured at this firm, the categories that sit beside EB-1C, and where the calendar for each one comes from.

Read the employer page
L-1, the visa this green card usually follows

The intracompany transfer visa reads closely related facts: the same two companies, the same year abroad, a related definition of the role. If the person is not in the United States yet, L-1 is the first conversation.

Read the L-1 page
What it costs

Fees here are always quoted in three separate lines: the attorney fee, government filing fees, and other costs. The published numbers live on one page.

See the full fee breakdown

Bring the org chart, not the brochure.

A consultation on an EB-1C is mostly a reading: the role at both companies, the ownership documents, the year abroad. I will tell you how I read it, including if the honest answer is not this category, and what would fit instead.

Two ways to start, and who you sit with

The first is a free intake with my team. The second is the paid consultation, and that one is with me.

Intake

15 minutes · Free

My paralegal team, not me

A short conversation to hear what is going on and get it written down properly. My paralegals ask about your status, your dates, your employer if there is one, and what you have already tried. By the end of it you know what a consultation with me would cover and whether it is worth booking one yet.

This step is intake and scheduling. My paralegals do not give legal advice, do not tell you whether you qualify for anything, and do not recommend a visa category. That part is mine, and it happens in the attorney consultation.
Attorney consultation

60 minutes · $150

If you go on to retain the firm for the matter the consultation covered, the fee is credited toward your fee for that case. The credit does not expire.

Joe Kwon, the attorney who would handle the case

This is where the legal discussion happens. You tell me what you have and what you are trying to do, and I tell you what I think, including when I think the answer is no. Some of these end with me not taking the case. That is a real result of the call, not a failure of it. I read what you send before we sit down, so the whole session goes to your question. The consultation runs as a video call, from wherever you are.

Book a consultation See the full fee breakdown

Booking does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Immigration benefits are decided by government officers who apply the law to the record in front of them, and many of them are discretionary. No attorney can promise you an approval, and anyone who does is telling you what you want to hear. What good lawyering controls is whether your case is complete, specific, and internally consistent, so that approving it is the officer's easiest path.