The Visa Basis of a Corporate Transfer — Category D1
An intra-company transfer — bringing an employee to Georgia within the same company's operations — rests on the visa side on subparagraph „da“ of Article 7 of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens. It is there that the D1 immigration visa is expressly provided for representatives and consultants of companies and firms who travel to Georgia to perform their employment duties — precisely the visa instrument that serves an intra-company transfer.
Under the same subparagraph, a D1 visa is also issued to a labour immigrant registered in the unified database of the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labour, Health and Social Affairs who enters Georgia for employment with a local employer, and to persons coming to carry out entrepreneurial activity in accordance with the Law on Entrepreneurs. It is worth noting that the consolidated text also carries a new wording of this subparagraph, which enters into force on 1 March 2026 and ties the D1 visa to an alien who has received the right to labour activity — the link between the right to work and the visa becomes even more direct.
The Place of Category D in the Visa System
Under Article 7 of the law, Georgian visas are divided into categories: diplomatic (A), special (B), ordinary (C), immigration (D) and transit (T). A Georgian visa may be short-term or long-term. It is the immigration category D that covers the circle of persons oriented towards a longer stay in Georgia — for study, work or family reunification.
In the transfer context this means that the status of a company representative or consultant is shaped in the Georgian visa system as a separate, statutorily defined category, and the application must be built precisely on the requirements of that category.
The Work Residence Permit — a Status Tied to the Employer
After the visa, the next stage is residence. The work residence permit under subparagraph „a“ of Article 15 is issued to an alien carrying out entrepreneurial or labour activity, who submits to the agency a confirming document and a certificate confirming that his monthly income from entrepreneurial or labour activity in Georgia is not less than five times the subsistence minimum of the average consumer.
The law also sets a threshold on the employer's side: the employer enterprise's annual turnover must not be less than 50 000 GEL per each alien seeking a work residence permit, while for an educational or medical institution this threshold is reduced — to no less than 35 000 GEL. This means that when planning a transfer, the company must verify in advance its turnover counted per transferred employee.