By Syed Muhammad Tanzeel Hayder9 min read
This question comes up more than almost any other, usually in one of two shapes. Can I attend meetings in the US on a visitor visa, and can I keep working for my employer back home while I am there.
The first has a clear answer. The second does not, and the honest version of this article says so rather than inventing one.
The exclusion is in the statute itself
Most people go straight to guidance about what a B-1 allows. It is worth starting a level higher, because 8 USC 1101(a)(15)(B) builds the limit into the definition of a visitor. A B nonimmigrant is
an alien (other than one coming for the purpose of study or of performing skilled or unskilled labor...) having a residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning
Note what that does. Somebody coming to perform labour is not a visitor who has broken a condition. They fall outside the definition of a visitor altogether. And it says skilled or unskilled, so seniority is not a defence: a director flying in to run a project is as far outside it as anybody else.
What business does mean
22 CFR 41.31(b)(1) fills in the other side:
conventions, conferences, consultations and other legitimate activities of a commercial or professional nature
followed immediately by the limit: it does not include local employment or labor for hire.
So the permitted list is recognisable. Meetings. Negotiating or signing a contract. A trade show. Consulting with a US counterpart. Training you are receiving. Looking at a site or an investment. What they have in common is that the commercial activity belongs to a business abroad and you are here briefly on its behalf.
The construction paragraph, which tells you how they think
The regulation then does something unusual and singles out one industry, which is worth reading even if you have never been near a building site, because it shows the reasoning applied everywhere else.
Building or construction work, on site or in plant, is deemed to be purely local labour for hire. Then the carve-out: supervising or training others engaged in that work, but not actually performing it, is not labour for hire, provided the person otherwise qualifies as a B-1.
The same hand doing the work and the same hand directing it, separated by which one is holding the tools. Not by skill, seniority, or how long the visit lasts. That distinction is the clearest published illustration of where the line sits.
The question the texts do not answer
Now the one everybody actually came for. You are visiting family for three weeks and you open your laptop and answer your employer in Karachi or Dubai. Is that work.
The regulation does not address it. It was written before this was an ordinary way to live, and it names neither remote work nor a foreign employer. Anyone quoting you a clean rule with a citation attached is going past the text, and you should treat the confidence as a warning.
What you can reason from is the test the regulation does give, which is whether the activity amounts to local employment or labour for hire. Two facts do most of the work in that assessment: who your employer is, and where the money comes from. Answering email for a company abroad that pays you abroad, incidentally, during a genuine visit, sits at one end. Taking on US clients, being paid from a US source, or entering the US principally in order to keep working sits at the other, and the second end has a name in the regulation.
The distance between those ends is real, and so is the grey in the middle. If your trip lives in that middle, that is an attorney question. It is a cheap one relative to being found inadmissible later.
Pleasure, and the one purpose excluded by name
22 CFR 41.31(b)(2) defines pleasure broadly: recreational activity, tourism, amusement, visits with friends or relatives, rest, medical treatment, and activities of a fraternal, social or service nature.
It then excludes one thing explicitly, which is obtaining a visa for the primary purpose of obtaining US citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States. It is rare for a regulation to name a single purpose like that, and worth knowing precisely because the topic attracts a great deal of confident nonsense.
Why this decides more than the trip
The B classification turns on the presumption in 8 USC 1184(b), which assumes you intend to immigrate until you show otherwise. A purpose that sounds like work feeds that presumption directly, because the obvious follow-on thought is that somebody working in the US has a reason to remain there.
So an unclear answer about what you will be doing costs you twice: once on the purpose itself, and again on the intention behind it. That is also why the interview returns to what you will actually be doing rather than accepting the category word, and why an inconsistent answer between the form and the window is expensive. Where the two disagree, the gap becomes the issue before anything else can be resolved.
Our US B-1/B-2 page sets out what the route is assessed against, and the free check asks directly whether any of the work is for a US source, because that answer changes the reading.
If you are already unsure
Being uncertain which side of this your trip falls on is a reason to resolve it before the appointment rather than at the window. “I think so” is an answer an officer has to treat as a maybe, and a maybe on this particular point is expensive.
If the honest description of your trip involves being paid by anybody in the United States, that is outside what this article or any questionnaire can weigh, and an immigration attorney is worth the fee. A different visa category may simply be the right answer, which is a much better outcome than a refusal on a B-1.
See how the purpose of your trip reads
Forty questions against the published US criteria, including whether any of the work is for a US source, and seven cross-checks between your own answers. Free, and nothing leaves your browser.
Start the free checkCommon questions
What counts as business on a B-1 visa?
22 CFR 41.31(b)(1) defines it as conventions, conferences, consultations and other legitimate activities of a commercial or professional nature. Meetings, negotiations, a trade show, training you are receiving, signing a contract. The regulation then adds the limit: it does not include local employment or labour for hire.
Can I work remotely for my home employer while in the US?
The regulation does not name remote work, so anyone quoting you a definitive rule is going beyond the text. What it does give you is the test it applies: whether the activity is local employment or labour for hire. Answering email for an employer abroad who pays you abroad sits differently from taking on US clients or being paid from a US source, and the further you move toward the second the weaker the position becomes. This is a genuine grey area and a question for an attorney rather than a website.
Does the statute say anything about work?
Directly. 8 USC 1101(a)(15)(B) defines a visitor as somebody other than one coming for the purpose of study or of performing skilled or unskilled labour. The exclusion is in the definition itself, before you reach the regulation, and it covers skilled work as squarely as unskilled.
What about construction or installation work?
The regulation singles it out. Building or construction work, on site or in plant, is deemed purely local labour for hire. The one carve-out is that supervising or training others doing that work, as opposed to performing it yourself, is not, provided the person is otherwise qualified as a B-1.
Can I attend training on a B-1?
Receiving training generally sits inside the commercial or professional activities the definition describes. Delivering it for a US entity that pays you is a different arrangement. The direction of the payment is usually what separates the two.
Is giving birth in the US a permitted pleasure purpose?
No, and this is one of the few things the regulation excludes by name. 22 CFR 41.31(b)(2) defines pleasure to exclude obtaining a visa for the primary purpose of obtaining US citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States.
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