United States · Employment
EB-1C Immigrant Visa for Multinational Managers and Executives
Open
Last verified July 2026
Open. No labour certification required. Approval rates have run roughly 78-82% across FY2022-FY2025, materially lower than L-1A. RFE rates exceed 40% where organisational-chart, management-scope or corporate-relationship documentation is incomplete.
This is the classic exit from L-1A for a business-owning family. There is no PERM, no investment threshold, and you can reuse the same evidence base you already built for the L-1A. The whole structure fails, though, if the foreign entity is wound down or the US entity never grows past the founder.
The facts
- Total landed cost
- USD 20-50k in legal and filing fees, on top of the cost of genuinely operating both entities
- Route type
- By employment
- Timeline
- 1–5 years (I-140 premium processing is available. Visa availability is the constraint for India and China.)
- Physical presence
- Green card maintenance rules apply once granted
- Family
- SpouseUnmarried children under 21
- Permanent residency
- Immediate green card on visa availability
- Citizenship
- 5 years of permanent residence
- Language test
- English and civics on naturalisation
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- one year of managerial or executive employment abroad with the qualifying entity in the preceding three yearsUS petitioner doing business for at least one yeara qualifying multinational relationship maintained throughoutthe US role must be managerial or executive
What can go wrong
- The foreign qualifying entity must continue doing business throughout the process. This is a common and fatal oversight once the family has relocated.
- The US entity must have been doing business for at least one year before the I-140 is filed.
- The term manager must mean managing people or an essential function. A founder who is still the operator will be denied.
- India and China face the same EB-1 retrogression here as in EB-1A.