Where to File I-140 Premium Processing Requests

Where to File I-140 Premium Processing Requests You must complete and sign new Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service, in accordance with the instructions on the new form which is expected to be released tomorrow, August 21, 2006. You must file the concurrently filed Form I-907 with Form I-140 at the Service Center designated as the appropriate filing location on the instructions to the new Form I-907. If you have already filed the Form I-140 which is pending and you now want to request Premium Processing Service, you should file the new Form I-907 with the Service Center where the Form I-140 is currently pending. You should a copy of the Form I-140 filing receipt. If you received a transfer notice, it is very important that you include a copy of it and that you your filing to the transfer location. If a petitioner erroneously filed a concurrent or standalone Form I-907 at the wrong service center, USCIS will not reject the filing, but instead will forward the filing to the correct service center having jurisdiction over the petition. However, in such event you will experience delays as the 15 calendar day period will start on the date the file is received at the correct service center as indicated in the new Form I-907 filing instructions. Lastly, the new Form I-907 and the request for Premium Processing of I-140 should not be filed before August 28, 2006. Please remember also that the alien beneficiary cannot sign and file Form I-907. Only employer or employer's representative including the lawyer can sign and file the Form I-907. Please stay tuned with this site for the upcoming release of the new Form 907 and instructions. Conditions for I-140 Premium Processing Services Are there any additional conditions of availability being placed on the Premium Processing Service at this time? Yes. This will accord USCIS the flexibility to adapt to contingencies affecting its ability to provide Premium Processing Service. Premium Processing Service is available for the Form I-140 classifications indicated on the chart above provided that the case does not involve: A second filing of a Form I-140 petition while an initial Form I-140 remains pending; Labor Certification substitution requests; and Duplicate Labor Certification requests (i.e., cases filed without an original labor certification from the Department of labor). USCIS is prescribing these additional conditions of availability on Premium Processing for Form I-140 because of their special processing requirements, including locating and transferring other files or documents internally and requesting initial evidence from an outside agency, that make it difficult for USCIS to guarantee that it will process the case within a 15 calendar day period. I-140 Premium Processing Filing Procedure and Advisory for the Commercial Immigration Form Software Producers It is anticipated that next week, the USCIS will release detailed filing procedure, including the specific Service Center, address, and other procedural matters. Part of the procedural matters may be released in the new Premium Processsing Request form, I-907. As we warned in the previous postings, the employers are not supposed to use the new form until August 28, 2006. From August 28, 2006, the new I-907 form will be the only form the USCIS will accept and the current form I-907 will be rejected. Usually the commercial immigration form producers that are used by most of the immigration practitioners and employers update the forms before the effective date of the new forms to assist their customers. In most of these cases, there is a grace period during when both old and new forms are accepted. However, the USCIS announcement indicates that the customers must use the current form I-907 until August 27 and the new form I-907 from August 28, 2006. Otherwise, the filing of the PPS is expected to be rejected by the agency for the reason of "invalid" forms. It is thus imperative that these commercial producers may not want to update the I-907 software form until the 27th to ensure that their customers use the right form. As for the customers filing the PPS from next week, it may not be a bad idea to use the USCIS website form I-907 during the one week period. EB-3 I-140 Premium Processing, Trend of Upsurge of I-140 Denials, and Need for Review of Standards in Major Issues Traditionally, the denial rate of H-1B has been estimated to be between approximately 10% and 15% of total H-1B filings. Similar statistics have yet to be disclosed by the USCIS. However, there have been some outcrys in immigrant community relating to the increased trend of RFEs and denials in I-140 petitions, particularly EB-3 petitions. We do not want to pretend that changes in the processing time of AAO appeals of EB-3 petition denials can be a yardstick for measurement of the trend of agency's denials of EB-140 petitions. AAO Processing Time Reports during the past four years may shed some light on the backgrounds for the mounting delays in AAO's processing times as seen bvelow AAO EB-3 Appeals Processing Times Dates 10/17/02 07/31/03 12/04/04` 06/14/05 12/28/05 05/26/06 Proc Time (Months) 7 10 14 15 18 17 Again, we do not have specific statistics on the issues involved in the denials. However, it is more or less very obvious that the two issues have dominated denials in the majority cases. One is retlated to the employer's eligibility and the other is related to the alien beneficiary's eligibility. The employer's eligibility denials are speculated to be the employer's financial ability to pay the proffered labor certification wage, and the alien beneficiary's eligibility denials are speculated to be related to the alien's educational credentials. The trend of increase of the AAO processing times must have been related to the increased number of denials and the increase in the denials may have something to do with the past two or three years of field offices's policy changes in the standards relating to these two issues. The trend has moved from the fairly liberal policeis to the restrictive policies during the past few years. Report indicates that in order to deal with the increasing trend of restrictive policies of the field offices, the USCIS HQ leasders have been contemplating issuance of regulation or policy memorandum to guide the filed offices to loosen up the ever tightening narrow reading of the standards. For instance, as for the employer eligibility issue, the USCIS has drafted a proposed regulation to loosen up the standards for the employer's eligibility to pay the proffered wage. As for the alien's foreign educational credential issue, indeed the culprit party was the AAO itself and the USCIS leaders have been contemplating issuance of a memorandum to override the unprecent AAO decisions that have led to the restrictive application of the standards by the field offices. Unfortunately, release of both of these HQ guidances has been delayed and delayed. People should understand that current restrict policy will continuously produce a lot of RFEs in the I-140 premium processing cases. Since the premium processing rule provides that once RFE is issued, running of 15-day clock disappears and the 15-day clock will run anew from the date the agency receives the requested evidence from the employers in response to the RFE. This process will substantially delay the adjudication process. It is thus advised that people review approvability of their I-140 petitions without issuance of RFE under the current standards and practice points of the adjudicating agency before they file a I-140 PPS. Otherwise they may just lose $1,000 with the expected benefits. Information indicates that the USCIS HQ has a plan to release a "reconfigued bi-specialization structure" in the two jurisdictions: Probaby one jurisdiction taken by the VSC-NSC pair and the second jurisdiction taken by the CSC-TSC pair. The details have yet to be disclosed by the USCIS, but from the fact that the main motive for such restructuring is allegedly to prevent shipping of massive files from offices to offices, one possibility is the bi-specialization in each jurisdiction diving the entire country into the two jurisdictions. Or it can be something else. Such restructuring will one way or another affect the process, but there is no information available about when it will take place. Accordingly, people may assume that until such change takes place, they develop the case based on the narrowest standards the agencies currently apply on various issues, particularly the two issues which we raised in the foregoing paragraph. http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/howdoi/prem_process.htm http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/formsfee/forms/i-907.htm http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/newsrels/PremProc081806NR.pdf