Owing to increasing inflation and in keeping up with the other rising expenses, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is going to increase the fee to request premium processing for certain employment-based petitions. Effective immediately, the fee for premium processing is going up by $30 to $1,440. The current fee was $1,410.

This increase in premium processing fee to $1,440 is applicable to Form I-129, Petition for a Non-Immigrant Worker and Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker. Premium Processing allows employment-based nonimmigrant applicants to file for expedited processing of their Immigrant Petition to receive an adjudication within 15 working days for this extra fee. The premium processing fee is paid in addition to the base filing fee and any other applicable fees. USCIS last increased the fee in 2018.

Premium Processing can either be filed concurrently with the non-immigrant petitioner after the non-immigrant petition has been filed. This is usually done by the petitioning employer or the attorney of record on the petition. If the USCIS is unable to complete the processing within 15 days, the entire fee will be refunded.

The basic documents required to be submitted to qualify for premium processing are below. For a successful filing of premium processing of your non-immigrant petition, talk to an immigration lawyer

• Although available online, provide copies of recent Form I-94
• Provide copies of currently approved I-797
• Provide copies of H1B or L approval notices that have been issued to the petitioner or the petitioner’s employees.
• Provide a copy of the I-129 and I-140 petition receipt notices if these forms were previously filed.
• Provide a copy of the labor certification approval letter. This letter is issued by the Department of Labor when you file under the EB-2 or EB-3 categories.

Starting this year, USCIS announced premium processing in a two-phased process. The first phase focused on data entry of all submissions and any one requesting a change in status got to access premium processing first. After this in second phase, USCIS opened premium processing up to the others. Since this was announced beforehand, employers and immigration lawyers were to be prepared for this and apply accordingly. In the past years, premium processing had been intermittently suspended due to heavy numbers and manage the adjudication better.

Premium processing is not available for H4 EAD petitioners.