U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently announced the immediate yet temporary suspension of the premium processing services for all the filed Form I-129 and I-140 petitions until further notice because of the ongoing crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The rule has been set in place effective March 20, 2020, USCIS has not been accepting any new requires for the premium processing. Any of the previously accepted Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service will be considered by USCIS for further processing in accordance with the premium processing service criteria.
USCIS further informed that they wouldn’t be able to send notices using the pre-paid envelopes. They are only going to send out batch printed notices.
The individuals who have already filed for the Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, or Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers integrating the premium processing service and the ones who receive no agency action with the 15-days mark will receive a refund for the processed fee.
USCIS is going to notify the public with the confirmed date when they resume the premium processing again.
USCIS has clarified that they are going to reject all the I-907 and return the $1,440 filing fee that have requested for the premium processing before March 20 and were not accepted yet.
The temporary suspensions include the following:
I-129: E-1, E-2, H-1B, H-2B, H-3, L-1A, L-1B, LZ, O-1, O-2, P-1, P-1S, P-2, P-2S, P-3, P-3S, Q-1, R-1, TN-1 and TN-2.
I-140: EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3.
This suggests that new premium processing requests to be registered for the H-1B visas, including the H-1B cap-subject petitions for the fiscal year of 2021. Along with that, the petitions from the previous fiscal and all the H-1B petitions except from the cap.
USCIS had also previously announced the temporary suspension of premium processing for the FY 21 cap-subject petitions and also declared some of the tentative dates for the resumption of the premium processing services.
For the latest reports, it is advised that one keeps checking the Check Case Processing Times page and the H-1B page on the USCIS website.
