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The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it will be resuming Premium Processing on Tuesday, March 12, for all H-1B petitions.

Back on September 11, 2018, USCIS had announced that it was extending a previously announced temporary suspension of premium processing for H-1B cap petitions and expanding the suspension to include certain additional H-1B petitions. On January 28, 2019, USCIS announced that it would resume premium processing for FY 2019 cap-subject petitions. Just recently, USCIS announced that it was resuming premium processing for all H-1B petitions that were filed on or before December 21, 2018. This most recent announcement confirms USCIS will be resuming Premium Processing for all H-1B petitions.

USCIS guarantees a 15-day processing time when an H-1B petitioner requests Premium Processing. If USCIS does not take certain adjudicative action within those 15 calendar days, USCIS refunds the petitioner’s Premium Processing service fee and continued with expedited processing of the petition.

Special Instructions:

  • If you received a transfer notice for a pending H-1B petition and you are requesting premium processing service, you must submit the premium processing request to the service center that is now handling the operation. You should include a copy of the transfer notice with your premium processing request.
  • If you have received a Request for Evidence (RFE) for a pending H-1B petition and you are requesting premium processing service, you should include the RFE response with the premium processing request.

Please do not hesitate to contact our office if you have any questions regarding this matter.