INS Suspends Premium Processing for H2A Agricultural Workers
Posted Aug 17, 2001

As many of you know, the INS recently instituted the premium-processing program as allowed under law. The premium-processing program was only implemented as of June 1, 2001 and now, a short time later, it has been discontinued only for H2A workers. We have described the premium-processing program in various articles in the last few months in our MurthyBulletins.

The reasoning behind the decision to suspend the premium processing for H2A workers is that INS must already process H2A petitions on an expedited basis, usually within about 20 days, in order to comply with existing laws and regulations. Therefore, it would be unfair to charge a $1000 premium-processing fee for expedited, 15-day processing.

Please note that premium processing continues to be available for the E1 (treaty trader), E2 (treaty investor), H1B (temporary professional worker), H2B (temporary worker), H3 (trainee), L1 (intra-company transferee), O1/O2 (extraordinary ability or achievement), P1/P2/P3 (athletes and performers), and Q1 (cultural exchange) categories.