IN THIS GUIDE · Decide whether a welding-procedure specialist can use the parent's blanket L or needs an individual petition
Start with the L-1B eligibility and application overview
What L-1B requires regardless of route
The transferee must have one continuous year of employment with a qualifying related entity abroad within the three years before the petition, the entities must be related as parent, subsidiary, branch or affiliate, and both must be doing business. The knowledge must be specialized: special knowledge of the company's product, process or techniques and their application internationally, or an advanced level of knowledge of its processes and procedures. Ordinary skill in welding, however high, does not qualify. The maximum stay is five years, counting all L time. L-2 spouses are employment-authorized incident to status; children may study but not work.
Blanket L and the professional requirement
A blanket petition lets a qualifying corporate group transfer managers, executives and specialized-knowledge professionals without an individual petition for each. The word professional matters. For blanket purposes a specialized-knowledge professional is someone who, in addition to having specialized knowledge, is a member of the professions, which the regulations tie to a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. A journeyman welder with a trade certificate and fifteen years' experience may have deeper knowledge of the overlay process than any engineer in the group, but he is not a blanket-eligible professional. Sending him to the port of entry with a Form I-129S under the blanket will produce a refusal that the individual petition then has to explain.
The individual L-1B petition
An individual petition on Form I-129 has no degree requirement for L-1B; it asks whether the knowledge is specialized and whether the beneficiary has it. The evidence should show the weld-overlay process is the company's own: procedure specifications with revision history, qualification records showing him as the welder who qualified the procedures and later as the person who trains and tests others, nonconformance reports he resolved, and customer or inspector correspondence relying on his sign-off. Add a comparison with the standard published welding codes to show what is proprietary, and an assessment of how long it would take to bring a U.S. welder to the same level.
Sequencing across the two plants
Confirm the qualifying year from payroll, checking for any long stints at the U.S. plant on business visits, which do not count toward the year. Decide who will supervise him in the United States and document that the parent, not a customer, principally directs and supervises his work, and that any customer-site placement provides a parent product or service requiring its specialized knowledge rather than labour for hire. Fix the U.S. payroll and any intercompany charge. File the individual petition with premium processing if the parent's schedule is tight, and only then have him apply for admission at the port of entry with the approval notice. If the group later wants to use the blanket for a degreed engineer, that is a separate case.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.