Global mobility and family immigration planning: a preventive model for brazilian families in corporate transfer to the United States
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69849/tv11b059Keywords:
Global mobility, Family law, L-1/L-2 visas, Family immigration planning, Corporate expatriation, Transnational families, Brazil–United StatesAbstract
The phenomenon of corporate global mobility reached a historic milestone in 2024, with 304 million international migrants worldwide, of whom approximately 2.08 million are Brazilian residents in the United States. The transfer of a professional by a multinational company to a U.S. office is, in practice, an event that reconfigures the entire family's life — not only the worker's. However, traditional immigration planning continues to treat this phenomenon in a one-dimensional way, focusing exclusively on the visa holder. This article proposes a new paradigm: the Preventive Family Immigration Planning (PFIP), a multidisciplinary methodology that articulates Family Law, U.S. Immigration Law, and expatriation psychology to proactively map the legal and human impacts of a corporate transfer on each family member. Based on a study of the L-1/L-2 visa regime, four central structural vulnerabilities are identified: the family's absolute migratory dependency on the worker's status; the disruption of the spouse's professional identity; the forced separation of children who turn 21; and the legal risks of marital dissolution in a transnational context. For each of these vulnerabilities, the article proposes concrete mitigation strategies, culminating in a four-phase structured planning model.
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