News Update - April 8, 2014

AAO Decision on What Constitutes Doing Business in I-140 Multinational Executive /Managerial Petition

The attached unpublished decision of the AAO involves the interpretation of the words “doing business” in an I-140 EB-1C multinational executive/managerial petition where the U. S. petitioner’s evidence of such was only between itself and an overseas affiliate and not any other companies in the U. S. The Center Director denied the petition finding that the petitioner had failed to establish that it had been doing business for at least one year as of the date the petition was filed, reasoning that the petitioner’s evidence for a full year preceding the filing of the petition only demonstrated the shipment of goods from the foreign company to the U. S. company. The AAO sustained our argument that the regulations do not require a petitioning U. S. company to be a direct party to contracts or a direct provider of goods and services to a U. S. customer. It compared the regulatory definitions of “doing business” in both the immigrant and nonimmigrant contexts, found that they were nearly identical, pointed to statements of legacy INS during the regulatory process that included services to a company outside the United States, and thus declined to read a third-party or non-affiliation requirement into the regulations.

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