dismissed L-1A Case: Information Technology

U.S. Citizenship 
and Immigration 
Services 
MATTER OF T-M-, LLC 
Non-Precedent Decision of the 
Administrative Appeals Office 
DATE: JUNE 14, 2019 
APPEAL OF CALIFORNIA SERVICE CENTER DECISION 
PETITION: FORM I-129, PETITION FOR A NONIMMIGRANT WORKER 
The Petitioner, an information technology company, seeks to temporarily employ the Beneficiary as 
an application development manager under the L- lA nonimmigrant classification for intracompany 
transferees. See Immigration and Nationality Act (the Act) § 101(a)(15)(L), 8 U.S.C. 
§ 110l(a)(15)(L). The L-lA classification allows a corporation or other legal entity (including its 
affiliate or subsidiary) to transfer a qualifying foreign employee to the United States to work 
temporarily in a managerial or executive capacity. 
The Director of the California Service Center denied the petition, concluding that the record did not 
establish, as required, that: (1) the Beneficiary is employed abroad in a managerial or executive 
capacity; and (2) the Petitioner will employ the Beneficiary in the United States in a managerial or 
executive capacity. 
On appeal, the Petitioner disputes the Director's findings, asserting that the Beneficiary's current and 
proposed positions are managerial. 
Upon de nova review, we will dismiss the appeal. 
I. LEGAL FRAMEWORK 
To establish eligibility for the L-lA nonimmigrant visa classification, a qualifying organization must 
have employed the beneficiary "in a capacity that is managerial, executive, or involved specialized 
knowledge," for one continuous year within three years preceding the beneficiary's application for 
admission into the United States. Section 10l(a)(15)(L) of the Act. In addition, the beneficiary must 
seek to enter the United States temporarily to continue rendering his or her services to the same 
employer or a subsidiary or affiliate thereof in a managerial or executive capacity. Id. The petitioner 
must also establish that the beneficiary's prior education, training, and employment qualify him or her 
to perform the intended services in the United States. 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(1)(3). 
Matter of T-M-, LLC 
II. EMPLOYMENT IN A MANAGERIAL CAPACITY 
The Petitioner claimed that the Beneficiary has been and would be employed in a managerial capacity. 
Therefore, we will address this claim in our decision and will not contemplate whether the Beneficiary 
would be employed in an executive capacity. 
"Managerial capacity" means an assignment within an organization in which the employee primarily 
manages the organization, or a department, subdivision, function, or component of the organization; 
supervises and controls the work of other supervisory, professional, or managerial employees, or 
manages an essential function within the organization, or a department or subdivision of the 
organization; has authority over personnel actions or functions at a senior level within the 
organizational hierarchy or with respect to the function managed; and exercises discretion over the 
day-to-day operations of the activity or function for which the employee has authority. Section 
101(a)(44)(A) of the Act. 
Based on the statutory definition of managerial capacity, the Petitioner must first show that the 
Beneficiary will perform certain high-level responsibilities. Champion World, Inc. v. INS, 940 F.2d 
1533 (9th Cir. 1991) (unpublished table decision). Second, the Petitioner must prove that the 
Beneficiary will be primarily engaged in managerial duties, as opposed to ordinary operational 
activities alongside the Petitioner's other employees. See Family Inc. v. USCIS, 469 F.3d 1313, 1316 
(9th Cir. 2006); Champion World, 940 F.2d 1533. 
When examining the claimed managerial capacity of a given beneficiary, we will look to the 
petitioner's description of the job duties. The petitioner's description of the job duties must clearly 
describe the duties to be performed by the beneficiary and indicate whether such duties are in a 
managerial capacity. See 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(1)(3)(ii). Beyond the required description of the job duties, 
we examine the company's organizational structure, the duties of a beneficiary's subordinate 
employees, the presence of other employees to relieve a beneficiary from performing operational 
duties, the nature of the business, and any other factors that will contribute to understanding a 
beneficiary's actual duties and role in a business. 
Accordingly, we will discuss evidence regarding the Beneficiary's job duties along with evidence of 
the nature of the Petitioner's business, its staffing levels, and its organizational structure. 
A. Employment Abroad 
1. Duties 
In a letter submitted in support of the petition, the director of the 
1
toreignl affiliate stated that the 
Beneficiary has been employed 40 hours per week with I I in Georgia, in the position 
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Matter of T-M-, LLC 
of chief technology officer from January 10, 2016, to present. The director also stated that the 
Beneficiary's current monthly salary is $1,576.82 1 and provided the following job description: 
Responsibilities include, but are not limited to: Manage research and development 
(R&D); Identify competitive advantages and technological trends for the benefit of 
a company; Manage and lead teams of software developers and testers, all around 
knowledge of services and code of all company systems such as Customer CMS, 
Payment Gateway Systems, Media processing, REST API; Analyze client 
requirement and development challenges; Plan and architect software development 
and guidelines; Communication with clients discussion and analysis of 
development requirements; Daily scrum meetings; and Agile development 
methodologies .... 
The Petitioner's initial submission also included the Beneficiary's resume. The technical skills section 
indicated that the Beneficiary is knowledgeable about various programming and software development 
products. The Beneficiary's resume's summarized duties as chief technology officer with the foreign 
affiliate are: 
• Manage research and development (R&D). 
• Maintain current information about technology standards and compliance 
regulations. 
• Identify competitive advantages and technological trends for the benefit of a 
company. 
• Managing and leading teams of software developers and testers .... 
• All around knowledge of services and code of all company systems such as 
Customer CMS, Payment Gateway Systems, Internal Customer Support Apps and 
Tools .... 
• Detailed understanding of web-based security. 
• Analyze client requirement and development challenges. 
• Analyze and decide best practices for various development challenges. 
• Plan and architect software development guidelines. 
• Continuous integration and delivery, manage new release deploys. 
• Develop engines for large data search and recommendation systems. 
• Communication with clients' discussion and analysis of various development 
requirements. 
• Daily scrum meetings, agile development methodologies. 
• Staff recruitment and retention. 
In a request for evidence (RFE), the Director stated that the Petitioner had not sufficiently described 
the Beneficiary's duties abroad. The Director asked the Petitioner to explain how the Beneficiary's 
position meets the requirements of managerial capacity. In response, the director of the foreign 
affiliate provided a statement that included the Beneficiary's summarized duties abroad and the 
percentage of time spent on each duty: 
1 $4,300 Georgian Lari (GEL) converts to $1,576.82 US Dollars (USD). See https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/ (last 
visited June 11, 2019). 
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Matter of T-M-, LLC 
• Communication (15%), 
• Planning (30%), 
• Allocate resources and lead the team (20% ), 
• Monitoring and evaluation (20% ), 
• Staging and production ( 10% ), and 
• Team expansion (5%). 
The Director denied the petition, finding that the Beneficiary's duties abroad are not primarily 
managerial and that the Beneficiary does not oversee supervisory, professional, or managerial 
employees within the company. The Director also found that the Beneficiary is likely to be performing 
services and involved in creating products for a significant portion of his time. 2 The Director also 
concluded that the Beneficiary would likely be performing non-qualifying operational tasks in the 
United States and the Petitioner did not demonstrate that there is a team of employees to support the 
claimed managerial role. We agree with the Director that the Petitioner has not demonstrated that the 
Beneficiary was employed abroad in a managerial capacity. 
The job description letter and the Beneficiary's resume both stated that the Beneficiary engages in 
various production-based job duties, including "analyze client requirement and development 
challenges," "plan and architect software development and guidelines," and "communication with 
clients' discussion and analysis of various development requirements." However, they do not explain 
how the Beneficiary carries out these duties or discuss the programming and software development 
services that are relevant within the scope of the foreign affiliate's application development operation. 
The Petitioner also did not sufficiently explain how these production-based responsibilities are higher­
level duties. And despite making references to "daily scrum meetings," the Petitioner did not explain 
the significance of these meetings within the scope of the foreign affiliate' s operation or clarify how 
the meetings relate to the Beneficiary's position of chief technology officer. 
The Petitioner provided a lengthy list of the Beneficiary's duties abroad and the percentage of time 
spent on each duty in response to the Director's RFE. A review of the details provided by the Petitioner 
suggests that the Beneficiary has been primarily engaged in the manifestation of the foreign affiliate's 
products and services, as opposed to maintaining managerial or supervisory authority over subordinate 
employees. For example, duties such as "communicate with stakeholders to gather the requirements 
for the new features or projects," "analyze project or feature requirements and define technical 
objectives," "use knowledge of legacy code and business logic to plan new features or projects 
development ... " and "create feature deploy tasks for new and existing products in production, list all 
the new features going online and notify stakeholders for approval" are tasks that require the 
Beneficiary's direct participation or involvement. Based on these duties, it appears that the 
Beneficiary plays an active role in the implementation of the foreign affiliate's clients' programming 
and software development services projects and does not delegate his responsibilities to others. An 
employee who "primarily" performs the tasks necessary to produce a product or to provide services is 
not considered to be "primarily" employed in a managerial capacity. See section 10l(a)(44)(A) of the 
Act (requiring that one "primarily" perform the enumerated managerial duties); see also Matter of 
Church Scientology Int'!., 19 I&N Dec. 593, 604 (Comm'r 1988). 
2 We will further address staffing issues below. 
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Matter of T-M-, LLC 
The Petitioner's response did not adequately address the Director's queries. Whether a beneficiary is 
a managerial employee turns on whether the petitioner has sustained its burden of proving that his or 
her duties are "primarily" managerial. See section 101(a)(44)(A) of the Act. Despite the Director's 
request for additional information, the Petitioner did not document what proportion of the 
Beneficiary's duties would be managerial functions and what proportion would be non-managerial. 
The Petitioner lists the Beneficiary's duties as including both managerial and operational tasks, but 
did not quantify the time the Beneficiary spends on them. 
By statute, eligibility for this classification requires that the duties of a position be "primarily" 
managerial in nature. Id. While the Beneficiary may exercise discretion over the foreign entity's day­
to-day operations and possess the requisite level of authority with respect to discretionary decision­
making, these elements alone are not sufficient to establish that his actual duties would be primarily 
managerial in nature. The actual duties themselves will reveal the true nature of the employment. 
Fedin Bros. Co., Ltd. v. Sava, 724 F. Supp. 1103, 1108 (E.D.N.Y. 1989), aff'd, 905 F.2d 41 (2d. Cir. 
1990). As such, a detailed job description is critical to a determination of whether the Beneficiary has 
been employed in a managerial capacity. Here, the record lacks a job description that delineates the 
Beneficiary's specific tasks within the context of the foreign entity's operation. 
The record indicates that the Beneficiary manages projects for the foreign affiliate's programming and 
software development services clients, however, without further details, we cannot find that managing 
projects is commensurate with the responsibilities of a manager. For instance, "break down project or 
feature implementation plan into specific tasks and write up in company task management system," 
"analyze software testing results and bug reports in development and in production," to name a few, 
are duties associated with managing a particular project. The technical skills section of the 
Beneficiary's resume specifically stated that he is knowledgeable about various "operating systems 
and servers," databases," and "applications and tools," to name a few; however, the Beneficiary's 
current job duties and technical skills section are synonymous with production-based tasks. The record 
does not support a finding that the Beneficiary primarily performed the duties of a manager abroad. 
2. Staffing and Organizational Structure 
The initial evidence included a copy of the services contract between the Petitioner and the foreign 
affiliate that was executed on January 1, 2016. The services contract identified the Petitioner as the 
"customer" and the foreign affiliate as the "provider" and stated the following: 
[l].2. The Provider shall, provide programming and software development services 
to the customer; also provider shall solve the Customer's Clients' problems, by 
rendering the following services: To receive information (notices, claims, 
problems etc.) from the Customer's Clients through the Customer's technical 
equipment (including IP telephones, Emails); to identify the Clients' problems and 
related issues as well as identifying the individual/company that encounters this 
problem; to study the obtained information (notices, claims, problems etc.) and to 
ensure complete data processing; to prepare a recommendation (proposal) on 
necessary further actions for problem solving for the Customer and to represent the 
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Matter of T-M-, LLC 
Customer by identified, complete information. The Provider shall use Customer's 
technology, software and database through the entire process. 
1.3. Term of the services rendering upon this Contract hereunder commences on 
January 1, 2016. The duration of the contract is from January 1, 2016 till December 
3PC, 2019 .... 
In the RFE, the Director requested more information about the foreign affiliate's organizational 
structure and the Beneficiary's subordinates. In response, the Petitioner provided the foreign affiliate's 
organizational chart and a summary of job positions and duties, educational levels, and salary 
addendum for the Beneficiary's subordinates. The foreign affiliate's organizational chart identified 
14 employees that consisted of the following structure: 
• Director [ TK.] 
o Chief Technology Officer [the Beneficiary] 
■ Lead Developer/Project Manager [J.C.] 
• Web Designer [NT] 
• QA Tester [S.S.] 
■ Senior DevOps Engineer [ D.I.] 
• Systems Operations Administrator [/.K.] 
• Full Stack Web Developer [Z.T] 
■ Senior Web Developer [ L.I.] 
■ Front-End Developer [ G.A.] 
• Senior PHP Developer [UC.] 
■ Full Stack Web Developer [Z.A.] 
■ Full Stack Web Developer [NJ] 
• Database Administrator [TB.] 
The addendum for the Beneficiary's subordinates included their respective job duties and identified 
the following: 
• From January 2016 to present, the foreiv affiliate employed/. C. with a Bachelor's degree 
in Informatics from I J University in the position of Lead Web 
Developer/Project Manager with a salary of $3,300 GEL after taxes; 
• From January 2016 to present, the foreign affiliate employed D.I. with a Bachelor's degree 
in Informatics froml !University in the position of Senior DevOps 
Engineer with a salary of $3,000 GEL after taxes; 
• From January 2016 to present, the foreign affiliate employed UC. with a Bachelor's 
degree in Computer Engineering froml O _ University with a salary of 
$3,300 GEL after taxes; 
• From January 2016 to present, the foreign affiliate employed Z. T with a Bachelor's 
degree in Telecommunication and Engineering froml I University with 
a salary of $3,250 GEL after taxes; 
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Matter of T-M-, LLC 
• From January 2016 to present, the foreign affiliate employed L.I with a Bachelor's degree 
in Informatics from! I University in the position of Senior Web Developer with 
a salary of $2,400 GEL after taxes; 
• From February 2016 to present, the foreign affiliate employed Z.A. with a Bachelor's 
degree in Informatics froml I University in the position of Full Stack Web 
Developer with a salary of $1,800 GEL after taxes; 
• From September 2017 to present, the foreign affiliate employed NJ with a Bachelor's 
degree in Computer Science from I University in the position of Full Stack 
Web Developer with a salary of $2,000 GEL after taxes; 
• From July 2016 to present, the foreign affiliate employed G.A. with the completion of 
various programming courses in the position of Front-End Developer with a salary of 
$2,100 GEL after taxes; 
• From February 2017 to present, the foreign affiliatJ employed S.S. with a Bachelor's 
degree in Electronic Engineering froml _ University in the position of QA 
Tester with a salary of $1,800 GEL after taxes; and 
• From October 201 7 to present, the foreign affiliate employed NT with the completion of 
private web design courses in the position of Web Designer with a salary of $1,200 GEL 
after taxes. 
The Beneficiary's job duties and resume, and the summary of job positions and duties addendum for 
the Beneficiary's claimed subordinates in I I Georgia, indicated that the positions of chief 
technology officer (the Beneficiary), lead developer/project manager, web designer, QA tester, senior 
dev ops engineer, systems operations administrator, foll stack web developer, senior web developer, 
front-end developer, and senior PHP developer all engage in various production-based job duties, 
including attending meetings and analyzing, developing, implementing, or maintaining the foreign 
affiliate's clients' satisfaction related to programming and software development projects. For 
instance, the foreign affiliate's services contract indicated that it is exclusively and primarily 
responsible for providing programming and software development services to the Petitioner. The 
record does not indicate that the foreign affiliate has any other clients beyond the Petitioner. 
Although the Petitioner provided job descriptions for the Beneficiary's subordinates, it is not clear that 
these employees are sufficient to relieve the Beneficiary from having to allocate his time primarily to 
the foreign affiliate's client's project tasks. Given the previously noted deficiencies in the 
Beneficiary's job duties and the lack of a detailed statement clarifying the foreign affiliate's precise 
role in the programming and software development process, we are unable to determine whether the 
Beneficiary's subordinates carry out the non-managerial tasks that the Beneficiary is claimed to 
manage. 
The Beneficiary's resume indicated that he "manage[s] research and development (R&D)" and 
oversees "staff recruitment and retention"; however, the foreign affiliate' s organizational chart does 
not identify a R&D and human resources department or personnel. Moreover, the addendum for the 
Beneficiary's subordinates does not indicate that any of the foreign affiliate's personnel have job 
duties synonymous with "R&D" and "staff recruitment and retention" tasks. It is not clear how the 
Beneficiary manages the foreign affiliate's R&D and human resources operations without subordinate 
personnel to perform the day-to-day tasks. 
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Matter of T-M-, LLC 
The Director's RFE specifically requested "copies of performance appraisals or reviews conducted by 
the Beneficiary for any such subordinate employees or any evidence that demonstrates the Beneficiary 
has sufficient managerial authority over subordinate employees and is engaged in the hiring and firing 
of subordinates or recommends these and other personnel actions." No such evidence was submitted. 
The record does not contain evidence corroborating the Beneficiary's claimed subordinates' 
educational credentials. Additionally, the record does not contain evidence that the Beneficiary's 
subordinates are managers or supervisors as depicted on the foreign entity's organizational chart: /. C. 
as lead developer/project in a position over NT as web designer and S.S. as QA tester, and D.I. as 
senior devops in a position over I.K. as systems operations administrator. 
In light of the evidentiary deficiencies described above, the Petitioner has not established that the 
Beneficiary primarily performed duties in a managerial capacity abroad. 
B. Employment in the United States 
Because of the dis positive effect of the above findings of ineligibility based on factors that pertain to the 
Beneficiary's employment abroad in a managerial capacity, we will provide only a brief discussion of the 
remaining issue that pertains to the Beneficiary's proposed employment in the United States. 
The Director determined that the Petitioner did not establish that the Beneficiary will be employed in the 
United States in a managerial or executive capacity. Based on our review of the Petitioner's supporting 
evidence, including the Beneficiary's job description and the Petitioner's organizational and management 
structures within the scope of an information technology enterprise, 3 we find that the Petitioner has not 
adequately demonstrated that the Beneficiary will assume a position where the primary portion of his 
time will be devoted to performing duties that primarily involve managerial tasks or supervise and control 
the work of other supervisory, professional, or managerial employees. The record does not indicate 
that the Beneficiary will be employed in the United States in a managerial capacity. 
Therefore, we agree with the Director's finding and will not further address this issue. 
III. CONCLUSION 
The appeal will be dismissed for the above stated reasons. In visa petition proceedings, it is the 
petitioner's burden to establish eligibility for the immigration benefit sought. Section 291 of the Act, 
8 U.S.C. § 1361. The Petitioner has not met that burden. 
ORDER: The appeal is dismissed. 
Cite as Matter ofT-M-, LLC, ID# 3727838 (AAO June 14, 2019) 
3 Part 5, number 12 of Form 1-129 indicated that the Petitioner's type of business is "Information Technology," while 
Section B, Line 2(a) and (2)(b) of the Petitioner's Form l 120S, U.S. Income Tax Return for an S Corporation, for 2017 
indicated that its business activity and product or service are media productions. 
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