US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced an expected further roll-out of premium processing to more case types.  Premium processing allows accelerated processing – response of some sort within 15 business days from receipt of filing, currently – upon payment of an additional fee.

As of January 30, USCIS will begin accepting premium processing requests for the EB-1(3) multinational executive or manager classification.  This extends the program to the only remaining EB-1 category not previously eligible for premium processing consideration.

Later, in March of this year, USCIS is expected to extend the program to I-765 Applications for Employment Authorization applications for those with pending applications seeking initial Optional Practical Training (OPT) or STEM OPT extensions filed as of a date yet to be announced, and then in April expand the program to make it available to those first filing for the initial OPT or STEM OPT extensions.

The Service anticipates a May announcement of an expansion of the program to certain I-539 applications.