USCA11 Case: 20-14788 Date Filed: 11/01/2021 Page: 1 of 14 [PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 20-14788 ____________________ VHV JEWELERS, LLC, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus CHAD F. WOLF, Acting Director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, KATHY A. BARAN, Director, California Service Center, U.S. Citizenship and Immigra- tion Services, KENNETH CUCCINELLI, Acting Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Defendants-Appellees. USCA11 Case: 20-14788 Date Filed: 11/01/2021 Page: 2 of 14 2 Opinion of the Court 20-14788 ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-04479-TWT ____________________ Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, LAGOA, Circuit Judge, and WATKINS,* District Judge. WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge: This appeal requires us to decide whether the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services acted in an arbitrary and ca- pricious manner when it denied VHV Jewelers’s petition to extend the L-1 nonimmigrant classification of one of its employees, Viral Harish Vaidya. For an employee to qualify for L-1 status as an ex- ecutive, the Immigration and Nationality Act requires that the em- ployee bear a certain set of high-level responsibilities and that the employee primarily engage in those specified duties. The Agency found that neither Vaidya’s employment abroad nor his domestic position met these requirements. VHV Jewelers petitioned for re- view on the ground that the Agency’s decision was arbitrary and capricious, and the district court granted summary judgment in *Honorable W. Keith Watkins, United States District Judge for the Middle District of Alabama, sitting by designation. USCA11 Case: 20-14788 Date Filed: 11/01/2021 Page: 3 of 14 20-14788 Opinion of the Court 3 favor of the government. Because the Agency’s decision was not arbitrary and capricious, we affirm. I. BACKGROUND The Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq., and its implementing regulations create several categories of immigrants and nonimmigrant aliens. One provision of the Act al- lows multinational companies to transfer managerial and executive employees from foreign offices to their counterparts in the United States. Id. § 1101(a)(15)(L). Nonimmigrant aliens in this category are called “intracompany transferees” and the visas granted to them are known as “L-1 visas” because of the provision creating the category. 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(l)(1)(i) (2019). Petitions for L-1 nonimmigrant status are filed with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Id. § 214.2(l)(3). Petitioners must prove to the Agency that the trans- feree’s foreign and domestic positions fulfill all the applicable re- quirements. See 8 U.S.C. § 1361. This appeal involves a subset of petitions for organizations that have been operating in the United States for less than one year: new-office petitions. See 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(l)(1)(ii)(F) (2019). New-office petitions require evidence that the transferee was employed abroad “for one continuous year in the three year period preceding the filing of the petition in an executive or mana- gerial capacity,” id. § 214.2(l)(3)(v)(B), and evidence that the “in- tended United States operation, within one year of the approval of USCA11 Case: 20-14788 Date Filed: …
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