US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that effective Tuesday, February 19, 2019, the agency will resume premium processing for all H-1B petitions filed on or before December 21, 2018. For applicants who received a transfer notice for their pending H-1B petition and plan to request premium processing, they must submit the premium processing request to the service center now handling the petition and include a copy of the transfer notice with the premium processing request. Additionally, for those who have received a Request for Evidence (RFE) for a pending petition, they should also include the RFE response with the premium processing request. For petitions that have been transferred, if applicants send their premium processing request to the wrong center, USCIS will forward it to the correct location; however, the fifteen day premium processing clock will not start until the premium processing request has been received at the correct center. USCIS has published a table to help applicants determine where to send their premium processing request if USCIS transferred their petition.

The previously announced temporary suspension of premium processing remains in effect for H-1B petitions to which it applied that were filed on or after December 22, 2018, and USCIS says they will resume premium processing for the remaining categories of H-1B petitions as agency workloads permit.