A commercial handover date is not immigration authorization. Assess the incoming person’s actual eligibility and appropriate process before relying on that date.
Identify the gap without inventing permission
Describe the planned responsibilities and real organization. Operational urgency cannot waive the qualifying foreign year or guarantee approval by the predecessor’s departure.
Confirm the actual approval and status dates from the underlying documents, keep the submitted business plan on file, and record changes to staffing, duties, or operations as they occur rather than reconstructing them later. Where a chronology may push a start date back by months, avoid commitments that cannot be undone: a school place accepted for a fixed term, a lease signed for a set date, or a spouse's resignation timed to an assumed departure. For a person initially admitted in specialized-knowledge capacity and later promoted, eligibility for the seven-year total requires at least six months employed in the managerial or executive position, with the change approved in an amended, new or extended petition when it occurs. A new-office approval runs one year, so evidence for the extension, meaning actual staff, actual revenue and a role that remains primarily managerial or executive as described, accumulates from the first month rather than the eleventh.