USCIS Announces “Phased In” Expansion of Premium Processing Service

The U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) also announced yesterday the expansion of optional premium processing service, which will be “phased in” over the course of the next three years. A Final Rule will be published in the Federal Register implementing this expansion this week. The new rule will take effect 60 days from its date of publication.

Premium processing is an additional fee paid to the USCIS to ‘guarantee’ initial adjudication of certain petitions or applications for immigration benefits within a specified time period. The USCIS is required to either approve, deny, or issue a request for more evidence, or notice of intent to deny within the specified time period. Until now, this service has been limited to certain employment-based petitions. The new rule plans to expand premium processing for I-765 employment authorization document applications, I-140 National Interest Waiver immigrant visa petitions, I-140 Multinational Manager and Executive petitions, and I-539 change of status and extension of stay applications for F-1 students, J-1 exchange visitors, and persons in dependent status (spouses and children) of most temporary worker categories.

The chart below summarizes the timeframe and the additional processing fee for the different categories:

The implementation of premium processing will be phased in over the course of the next three years, from FY2022 to FY2025. It appears that the expansion will only benefit National Interest Wavier and Multinational Manager petitions this fiscal year, but may also benefit persons seeking to change status to F, J, and M classification, or apply for work authorization in F and J classification.

The USCIS also announced today that it will soon implement a temporary Final Rule to provide automatic extension of work authorization for additional EAD types for up to 180 days. Currently, the automatic extension is only available for certain EAD filing categories.

What This Means for Our Clients

The expansion of premium processing will only improve processing times for a limited number of immigration benefits in the short-term. Although premium processing should be made available for I-140 National Interest Waiver petitions and Multinational Manager and Executive petitions before September 30th, it is unclear at this point when, or even if, premium processing will be made available for benefits facing the most detrimental processing delays, including H-4 EAD applications.

It is also unclear what actual benefit the expansion of premium processing service will provide for EAD and change of status applications once it is implemented, as the Rule indicates that the guaranteed processing timeframe does not start until “all prerequisites for adjudication” have been met. For I-539 change of status applications and other cases where biometrics or other ‘prerequisites’ are required, this could mean that ‘premium’ processing will still take several months. Hopefully the USCIS will provide more guidance on how the expansion will be implemented in the near future.

We are also hopeful that the USCIS will implement the Rule expanding the availability of automatic extensions of work authorization to additional categories, which may alleviate some of the USCIS processing delays for EAD applications.