Only after the complete facts establish the qualifying period and all other requirements. Travel, work location and role changes may mean the payroll anniversary is not the correct eligibility date.
Calculate before committing
Give counsel the continuous employment history and U.S. presence records, including any periods in another U.S. status.
New-office cases need the relevant year of managerial or executive foreign work. Once the date analysis is complete, allow additional time for evidence preparation and the actual filing and admission process. Avoid scheduling a fixed U.S.
start date from an unreviewed employment anniversary. Calculate before committing, since an anniversary is a fact about a start date rather than about eligibility. The relevant period is a continuous qualifying year within the three years preceding the filing or admission, so what matters is where that window falls and what the records show within it.
Work the arithmetic against the intended date, and repeat it if the date moves, because the window moves with it. Then allow time for what the calculation reveals, which is usually a records issue requiring retrieval rather than a substantive problem. Avoid announcing a transfer or agreeing a start date against an anniversary that has not been reviewed, since withdrawing a date already communicated to a team is considerably more awkward than setting a later one at the outset.