Are L-1B visa holders eligible to work remotely?

With immigration rules constantly changing with the pandemic situation, it is difficult to keep up to date with it all.

I have an approved I-140 from my old employer 'A' with a priority date from 2017. Now I am working for employer 'B'. I have a couple of questions about this:

• Is it worth doing my PERM here through employer 'B' again if I plan to change jobs soon (maybe in a year or so)?
• Are there any benefits of doing the PERM now through employer 'B'?
• Or would you suggest doing the PERM with my next employer and not bother with the PERM through employer 'B'?

If you are likely to keep moving employers, you could hold off until you know where you will be working long term. You already have a priority date. The date is not likely to become current soon, although freak fluctuations do occur. It makes sense to wait to file PERM again once you are in a long-term position.

I was on L-1A and later switched to H-4 EAD 3 years back (working with the same Indian multinational company for 15+ years). I manage a large team here in the USA, and some of my reportees are in the U.K. Since the H-4 EAD extension is taking time, my company plans to move me to Canada for one year. As per the plan, I will be back to the USA on an L-1A visa, and then the company will file for my green card in the EB-1C category. I don't have any team in Canada, and I will mainly manage the same U.S. and U.K. team from Canada.

After one year, when I apply for L-1A from Canada, do I need to have direct and indirect reportees only in Canada, or can they be anywhere in the world (USA, U.K., and even in India)? If my reportees (direct and indirect) are not in the same country where I am working (Canada), will it create any issue in filing the EB-1C?

The USCIS will consider the broad range of your duties within the business context, including employees being supervised and managed in countries other than the USA (or Canada). In our experience, the USCIS looks at whether the benefit of the work you perform with your dispersed team flows to the petitioning employer and the corporate group, department, or division within the L-1/EB-1C equity/control relationship. But, of course, your particular facts need to be examined in context. So have your lawyers look at them very carefully.

This is a question about after the return to normalcy from the pandemic. From an immigration perspective, are L-1B visa holders allowed to work remotely/work from home from within the U.S.? Does it matter whether the employee's house (where she will work from) is near the designated company office location or not?

And lastly, would you expect difficulty with getting the L-1B visa in the first place if the intention is to work remotely/from home (but within the U.S.)?

L-1B holders, unlike H-1B employees, are not geographically tied down. You can work from anywhere. Further, if you work and report in-house and not to a client, you should even be able to change locations without any amendments to your L-1B petition. Only L-1B visa holders who work at third-party sites are subject to certain limitations; the most important one is that you continue to be an "employee" under the company's control that petitioned for you. I can see no reason why the location should interfere with a visa at the consulate.

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