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I have spent 10 years on my H1B and I have been in the current company for 4 years. I am an Indian citizen. There was a requirement at work to setup a QA team in an offsite location. I spoke to my manager, HR and attorney if they will be able to bring me back on L1A, EB1C route and they agreed.
I moved to offsite location and started officially on the offsite country's payroll on June 17th 2019.
I started with two reports, and hired 2 more. I will also be adding 4-indirect reports (currently on different team who work with me). So a total of 8. I do typical manager tasks of assigning tasks/tracking tasks, communicating with cross functional teams regarding status, project status to upper management.
My H1B I-797 is valid until Jul 30 2020 and has been applied for extension. My H1B Visa is valid until Jul 20 2020. My 1 year in the foreign country will be complete on June 17th 2020.
My boss has now asked me multiple times when I am going to come back and is now asking me to come back as soon as possible once the 1 year is over. He infact suggested have all paper work ready and just file for L1A right after the 1 year is complete. I for some reason "was" not very comfortable of the idea, as I thought at the time of a L1A consular interview, I may be asked why I stayed exactly for one 1 year. Now I am considering this as well based on your responses.
I will be coming back as manager with a couple of US reports in addition to the existing 8 reports. My final goal is to make sure, I get my GC via EB1C. I have a priority date of June 2014 in EB2 and will be porting that when I do the EB1C.
-> Is there any risk towards getting the EB1C GC, if I choose to come back right after I complete the 1 year? (Between June 18th 2020 - Jul 20 2020) on my H1B visa. This is assuming the borders get re-opened. The advantage I see is, I do not have to attend either an H1B interview or a L1A interview here in the foreign country. All I need to do is after coming to US file adjustment of status. Any Gotchas here?
-> When I first left the US, I was thinking L1A is the better to visa to come back than H1B and also to stay a little more than 1 year , like 1 year 2 months (This is all myoverthinking to be safe). In the current scenario, both due to corona and political, does this even make sense? I am just subjecting myself to unnecessary hardship taking the L1A and 1 year 2 months duration?
Your responses appreciated.
