#premium processing

USCIS Expands Premium for ALL NIW applications and EB-13 Applications

Today USCIS announced that it would expand premium processing for National Interest Waiver application to ALL pending and ALL initial applications starting January 30, 2023. To remind you, premium processing for the National Interest Waiver (or the EB13) costs $2500 and USCIS will process the application within 45 calendar days. It is important to ensure that if you are going to use premium…

Third Phase of Premium Processing Expansion Underway

On September 15, 2022, USCIS launched the third phase of expanding its premium processing service. For those who do not recall, premium processing allows you to pay USCIS more money for them to process your case faster than usual. Premium processing is only available for certain cases and, until earlier this year, was NOT available for the National Interest Waiver cases (EB-2) or the…

Second Phase of Premium Processing Expansion to begin August 1, 2022

USCIS will be implementing the second phase of its planned expansion of its premium processing service starting August 1, 2022.  For those who are unaware, Premium processing is a service provided by USCIS that allows you to pay an extra fee to get your application adjudicated quicker (in many cases within 15 business days, but some may be 2 or 3 months).  While this service is currently…

USCIS Gives Implementation Date for Some Expansion of Premium Processing

Photo by Ju00c9SHOOTS on Pexels.com Today USCIS announced implementation dates for the expansion of premium processing to the EB-2 NIW and EB-1 Multinational Professional categories.  However, before giving the implementation date, it is important to remember that this will ONLY apply to EB-2 NIW filed with USCIS BEFORE June 1, 2021, and EB-1C cases filed with USICS BEFORE January 1,…

USCIS announced last week that it was resuming premium processing as of June 1, 2020.  However, USCIS stated that it would phase in the ability to file premium processing on cases in order to ensure that the office was not inundated with new premium processing cases before it was fully up and running again.  To that end, USCIS announced the following schedule for getting Premium Processing back…

The H-1B cap season is around the corner, and the premium processing for previously filed H-1B petitions has commenced on March 12th, 2019. USCIS has started the premium processing only for the H-1B petitions received on or before Dec 21st, 2018.

What is premium processing?

The usual processing time for H-1B petitions is around 5-6 months, which is very long. So USCIS has started the premium processing service to minimize the time taken for processing the employment-based petitions. Any petition filed under premium processing will take only 15 calendar days for completion of the process.

This 15-day period will begin once the USCIS receives the petition at the processing center.  Upon processing the petition USCIS will send any one of the following as a response to the petition within 15 days.

Approval

Rejection

RFE (Request For Evidence)

NOID (Notice Of Intent to Deny)

Open an investigation for fraud or misrepresentation

 In case you have received an RFE or NOID, you are responsible for sending an RFE/ NOID response to the USCIS for further processing. A new 15-day period will begin on the day USCIS receives the response to the RFE.

USCIS charges a huge amount of fee for the premium processing of your petitions. If USCIS fails to provide a response within the specified 15 days, it would refund your fee, but your petition will still be eligible for the premium processing.