Currently, it appears that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is experiencing delays in processing times for nonimmigrant visa applications. According to processing time reports as of August 31, 2015, H-1B applications filed at the Vermont Service Center should be taking 4 to 5 months for both Change of Status applications within the U.S., as well as Consular Processing applications where H-1B Visas will be issued abroad. In addition, processing times for H-1B extensions are reported at three (3) months. However, based on our firm’s recent cases, the processing times appear to be longer than announced. In fact, we have not received final decisions for some new cap-subject H-1B cases filed in April this year, and some of our O visa cases have been taking longer than 1 month to be adjudicated, despite the fact that USCIS’ processing time reports say 2 weeks.
The H-1B and O visas are not the only visa categories experiencing delays in processing times, and many of our clients have unfortunately been waiting longer than expected for their cases to be adjudicated. One option to speed up the processing time for your case is to consider upgrading to Premium Processing (for certain I-129 applications). While Premium Processing Service costs an additional $1,225, it will help speed up the process. We hope that these delays are temporary, and that processing times will return to normal soon.