Fees for H-1B US visas to receive ‘premium processing’ from US Citizenship and Immigration Services have paid for the cost of the agency’s attempts to digitize its processing. But, they have now been forced to suspend the service, because they are unable to keep up with the level of demand.
Every year at around this time, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) receives a mass of H-1B US visa applications. Companies have a window of five days in April when they can send in applications for new US visas while existing holders renew their own. But, USCIS has been suspended the premium processing option this week. They claim that a significant surge in applications for the expedited service, which can cut wait times from eight months to two weeks, has overwhelmed them.
Most of the revenue gained from the service in the last eight years – as much as $2.3 billion – was sunk into an attempt to digitize the massive immigration system. This effort appears to have been a spectacular failure, leaving the H-1B premium processing service understaffed, and with inadequate resources to handle demand.
Premium processing has been suspended on other occasions but could be particularly damaging this time, especially because the suspension could last up to six months. In April last year, as many as 236,000 H-1B US visa applications poured into Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the suspension could delay tens of thousands of new applications, costing the agency as much as $100 million in lost payments.