dismissed L-1A Case: Restaurant

U.S. Citizenship 
and Immigration 
Services 
MATTER OF T-R-O-C- LLC 
Non-Precedent Decision of the 
Administrative Appeals Office 
DATE: OCT. 28, 2019 
MOTION ON ADMINISTRATIVE APPEALS OFFICE DECISION 
PETITION: FORM I-129, PETITION FOR A NONIMMIGRANT WORKER 
The Petitioner, describing itself as an operator of a restaurant and bar, seeks to temporarily employ the 
Beneficiary as "Chief Executive Officer/Manager" of its new office 1 under the L-lA nonimmigrant 
classification for intracompany transferees. See Immigration and Nationality Act (the Act) section 
101(a)(15)(L), 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(L). The L-IA 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 has been employed abroad in a managerial or executive 
capacity; (2) the Beneficiary will be employed in the United States in a managerial or executive 
capacity; and (3) the Beneficiary's prior education, training and employment qualifies him to perform 
the intended services in the United States. The Petitioner then filed an appeal, which we dismissed, 
affirming the first two grounds and reserving the remaining ground . 
The matter is now before us on a motion to reconsider in support of which the Petitioner submits a 
legal brief contending that our decision is "contrary to law and the manifest weight or greater weight 
of the evidence." 
Upon review, we will deny the Petitioner's motion. 
I. LEGAL FRAMEWORK 
To establish eligibility for the L-IA nonimmigrant visa classification in a petition involving a new 
office, a qualifying organization must have employed the beneficiary in a managerial or executive 
capacity for one continuous year within three years preceding the beneficiary's application for 
admission into the United States. 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(1)(3)(v)(B). 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. 
1 The term "new office" refers to an organization which has been doing business in the United States for less than one year. 
8 C.F.R. § 214.2(1)(1 )(ii)(F). The regulation at 8 C.F.R. § 214 .2(1)(3)(v)(C) allows a "new office" operation no more than 
one year within the date of approval of the petition to support an executive or managerial position. 
Matter of T-R-O-C- LLC 
The petitioner must submit evidence to demonstrate that the new office will be able to support a 
managerial or executive position within one year. This evidence must establish that the petitioner 
secured sufficient physical premises to house its operation and disclose the proposed nature and scope 
of the entity, its organizational structure, its financial goals, and the size of the U.S. investment. See 
generally, 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(1)(3)(v). 
II. MOTION TO RECONSIDER 
A. Motion Requirements 
A motion to reconsider must establish that our decision was based on an incorrect application of law 
or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policy and that the decision was incorrect 
based on the evidence in the record of proceedings at the time of the decision. 8 C.F.R. § 103.5(a)(3). 
We may grant a motion that satisfies these requirements and demonstrates eligibility for the requested 
immigration benefit. 
B. Summary of Findings on Appeal 
The primary issue to be addressed in this decision is whether the Petitioner has put forth arguments 
establishing that our decision to dismiss the appeal was based on an incorrect application of law or 
USCIS policy with respect to the facts of this case. The Petitioner must establish that all eligibility 
requirements for the immigration benefit have been satisfied from the time of the filing (in this case, 
June 2018) and continuing through adjudication. 8 C.F.R. § 103.2(b)(l). 
As a preliminary matter, we note that the review of any motion is narrowly limited to the basis for the 
prior adverse decision. Here, the subject of the prior decision was our dismissal of the Petitioner's 
appeal. As such, the purpose of this decision is to consider legal arguments that pertain to our prior 
decision dismissing the appeal. 
In our appeal decision, we first addressed the Beneficiary's foreign employment. We noted that the 
Petitioner used two different job titles when referring to the foreign position and found that neither the 
job title of "Building and Sales Manager" nor "Purchase and Sales Manager" was reflected in the 
responsibilities and activities used in the Beneficiary's job descriptions, which were likely derived 
from a template that included repeated use of the phrase "INSERT Group." We observed that this 
template was likely used in the Beneficiary's U.S. job description, which was similar in content and 
contained the same generic phrase "INSERT Group." We also pointed to inconsistencies among the 
Beneficiary's various job descriptions and the multiple discrepancies regarding the foreign entity's 
staffing composition. 
Further, we found that despite providing several job descriptions in its response to the Director's 
request for evidence (RFE), the Petitioner did not address a critical evidentiary deficiency noted in the 
RFE regarding the lack of a detailed account of the Beneficiary's foreign job duties. Although we 
acknowledged that one of the job descriptions included a broad overview of the foreign entity's 
staffing, we found that none of the RFE submissions resolved the noted inconsistencies that we 
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Matter of T-R-O-C- LLC 
delineated in detail in our prior decision with regard to the Beneficiary's job title, level of authority, 
areas of responsibility, and job duties with the foreign parent entity. 
Likewise, we found that the RFE response did not provide insight into the Beneficiary's daily job 
duties with the U.S. entity and thus it did not adequately address the Director's request for a more 
detailed job description. More specifically, we found that the Petitioner provided vague and 
conflicting lists of the Beneficiary's U.S. job duties, offered inconsistent information about its staffing 
arrangement, and neglected to include personnel or hiring projections in its business plan, which 
lacked employee wage and salary information and thus precluded us from being able to gauge the 
Petitioner's operating expenses. We observed that the Petitioner has claimed that it would employee 
between 13 and 36 employees and while additional information was submitted on appeal, we found 
that the Petitioner did not provide a consistent and detailed description of its anticipated staffing 
structure at the end of its first year of operation. In sum, we concluded that the Beneficiary would 
likely assume the role of a restaurant manager who would primarily perform the restaurant's 
operational tasks rather than primarily executive job duties within one year of the petition's approval. 
C. Analysis 
In our prior decision, we summarized the Petitioner's response to the RFE and explained why we 
found that the submitted evidence of the Beneficiary's foreign and U.S. job duties and the foreign and 
U.S. entities' respective organizational structures was insufficient and did not establish that the 
Beneficiary was employed abroad and would, within one year of this petition's approval, be employed 
in the United States in an executive capacity. We described multiple inconsistencies and explained 
how the prior submissions were insufficient to allow the Petitioner to meet its burden of proof 
On motion, the Petitioner resubmits a brief whose content is nearly identical to the one previously 
offered in support of the appeal and adds that we repeated "the wrongful findings" of the original 
denial, "wrongfully dismisse[ d] all of the favorable evidence," and relied on "some misguided 
observationbs [sic]." The Petitioner also contends that it provided "more than sufficient evidence" of 
its qualifying relationship with the Beneficiary's foreign employer and "presented sufficient evidence" 
regarding the Beneficiary's foreign and proposed employment. 
As a threshold matter, we note that for purposes of assessing the merits of this motion, the subject 
matter to be considered is limited to only those legal conclusions that were made in the decision that 
immediately preceded the motion - in this case, our decision dismissing the appeal. Because the 
qualifying relationship issue was not in contention either in the Director's decision or in our decision 
dismissing the appeal, it is not relevant in this instance and need not be addressed beyond this point. 
Further, despite generally claiming that "sufficient evidence" was provided regarding the 
Beneficiary's foreign and proposed employment, the Petitioner has offered no evidence to support the 
argument that our decision was "contrary to the law" and that it was inconsistent with "the greater 
weight of the evidence." Aside from making these broad claims, the Petitioner does not specify how 
our decision was legally unsound or factually incorrect and it does not acknowledge or offer evidence 
to resolve the multiple inconsistencies we noted in our prior decision regarding key elements of its 
foreign employment claim, including the Beneficiary's job title, job duties, and staffing of the foreign 
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Matter of T-R-O-C- LLC 
entity. Likewise, the Petitioner disregards the multiple inconsistencies we laid out as grounds for our 
conclusion and neglects to specify legal errors to support its argument that our findings were 
"misguided." The Petitioner must resolve discrepancies in the record with independent, objective 
evidence pointing to where the truth lies. Matter of Ho, 19 I&N Dec. 582, 591-92 (BIA 1988). 
Although the Petitioner refers to an unpublished decision in which we determined that a beneficiary 
met the requirements of serving in a managerial or executive capacity for L-1 classification, it has not 
established that the facts of this petition are analogous to those in the unpublished decision. Further, 
while 8 C.F.R. § 103.3(c) provides that our precedent decisions are binding on USCIS, unpublished 
decisions are not similarly binding. 
We acknowledge that the Petitioner disagrees with our decision dismissing the appeal; however, it has 
not provided evidence establishing that our findings were based on an incorrect application of law or 
USCIS policy and that the decision was incorrect based on the evidence in the record of proceedings 
at the time of the decision. 8 C.F.R. § 103.5(a)(3). Therefore, the Petitioner has not shown cause for 
reconsideration. 
III. CONCLUSION 
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. Because the Petitioner has not shown proper 
cause for reconsideration, it has not met that burden. 
ORDER: The motion to reconsider is denied. 
Cite as Matter ofT-R-O-C-LLC, ID# 6407185 (AAO Oct. 28, 2019) 
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