USCIS Temporarily Suspends Premium Processing for H-1B Petition

Advertisement

USCIS H1-B visa premium processingOn March 3, 2017, USCIS announced a temporary suspension of premium processing impacting all H-1B petitions received by USCIS beginning April 3, 2017.  The suspension will be in place for up to six months, supposedly to permit the agency to prioritize pending H-1B cases that are outside of their normal processing time and to reduce the backlog of pending H-1B cases filed in 2016.

The following case types will be impacted:

Advertisement
  • All H-1B petitions filed under the fiscal year 2018 H-1B cap;

  • All H-1B cap-exempt petitions; and

    Advertisement
  • All non-cap H-1B extensions, all change of employer H-1B petitions, and all amended H-1B petitions.

    Advertisement

The USCIS premium processing suspension does not impact a petitioner or beneficiary’s ability to request “expedited handling” of any kind of H-1B petition.  Such requests will be granted on a case-by-case discretionary basis, if the petitioner and/or beneficiary can establish severe financial loss to company or person, an emergency situation, a humanitarian situation, or governmental interest, amongst other criteria.

Please note that the premium processing program suspension applies only to H-1B filings.  Employers may continue to use the premium processing service for, among others, L-1, O-1, TN, and I-140 immigrant petition filings.

© 2017 Dinsmore & Shohl LLP. All rights reserved.

Published by

National Law Forum

A group of in-house attorneys developed the National Law Review on-line edition to create an easy to use resource to capture legal trends and news as they first start to emerge. We were looking for a better way to organize, vet and easily retrieve all the updates that were being sent to us on a daily basis.In the process, we’ve become one of the highest volume business law websites in the U.S. Today, the National Law Review’s seasoned editors screen and classify breaking news and analysis authored by recognized legal professionals and our own journalists. There is no log in to access the database and new articles are added hourly. The National Law Review revolutionized legal publication in 1888 and this cutting-edge tradition continues today.