L1B-L1A conversion

[anikrish]

Hi,

My L1-B five years cap expired on 02-Oct-2012 and I am currently on leave without pay.
My current I-94 is valid till May 2013 and L1-B visa is valid till Nov 2012.
My company has applied for L1-B to L1-A conversion on 21 March 2012.
I received RFE on 18th July 2012.
We have submitted RFE responses with sufficient documents on 28th Sep 2012 on premium processing.
I am waiting for the decision now and my company says I have to go out of country if the petition is denied.
They also said if the petition is approved I can join the work back on L1-A petition.

My husband is working on L1-A and his visa/I-94 are valid till May 2013.

In case of my conversion petition denial my plan is to travel to India, get L2 as my husband's dependant and travel back to US in one month. But, I am looking for possibilities to change my status to L2 by staying at US itself as I am 6 months expecting now. It would be better if I can avoid the travel.

Please help!!!

[raghvi]

Your case has lot of complications . You should not have waited for 4 Months for the RFE in the inital phase itself. On top you took 2+ Months to respond to the RFE and waited 6+ Months to convert your application to premium processing. Also, I dont understand how you can be on leave without pay. On L1 and H1 no pay means you are already out of status. If your L1B to L1A change of status is rejected you will be out of status from L1B 5 Years tenure date to the date of rejection. In either case, for you to get on to L2 while in US you first need to be in a valid status. For any COS while in US one has to be in valid status first. So even if you apply for COS to L2 USCIS is going to ask proof of you having maitained valid status from 02-Oct-2012 till the application date such as proof of pay etc. Since you dont have those for Oct onwards your COS will be rejected or approved with consular process i.e. need go out of US get L2 stamped at a consulate outside US and return on L2.

I am afraid but getting a positive decision on your L1A is the only way you can salvage the out of status situation to some extent.Now that you have converted to premium you should get the decision soon.

This is my opinion not legal advice.