[pheug]

The spirit of the legislation may have been that L1B is for a temporary stay, but in practice today it's one of the major paths for high skilled foreign workers to permanently immigrate into the US, since H1B got extremely crowded lately. AFAIK most big tech companies wouldn't even try to bring anyone from overseas on H1B anymore - too much hassle, too little chance.

Instead they'd offer people to work for a year in Canada or Europe and then import them on L1. Advantages: it's not subject to quotas and lottery like H1B, and (a plus from employer perspective:) ties the person to the employer, so they ain't job hopping anywhere for a while.