USCIS suspends premium processing of H1B visa for 6 months
Posted on: 07/Mar/2017 2:39:09 PM
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that oversees lawful immigration of the US announced on 3rd April that premium processing of all H-1B visa petitions will be temporarily suspended.
This is likely to affect the Indian Information Technology services professionals who fly to the US with non-immigrant work visas that are H-1B visas mostly.
A statement from the USCIS states that the suspension may be effective for close to 6 months and this period will be used for clearing all long-pending petitions all of which are shelved because of not enough time for processing due to the pile up of petitions received and substantial rise in premium processing request in the recent years. Also, prioritizing of adjudication of H-1B extension of status case that nears over 240 days mark will also be done.
Until the period of suspension of H-1B premium or fast processing visa, according to USCIS sources, filing petition for non-immigrant workers or others under which the IT firms send off their employees for work in the US will also not be possible.
The technology industry is continuously under tenterhooks in terms of H-1B visa approval since Trump acquired position as the US president.
