Pay More Or Wait: US Visa Applicants Suffer

Premium processing, once promoted as an optional fast-track immigration service, is increasingly becoming unavoidable for international students, skilled workers and employers in the United States.

With regular visa processing timelines stretching for months at USCIS, many applicants are now being forced to pay extra fees just to protect job start dates, visa status and work authorization.

Immigration lawyers say this trend is now common across major categories such as F-1 OPT, STEM OPT extensions, H-1B visas, L-1 petitions, National Interest Waiver filings, EB-1 petitions and I-140 applications.

“Premium processing has quietly shifted from an optional convenience to a functional necessity across virtually every major immigration category,” said US-based immigration attorney Rajiv Khanna.

According to lawyers, applicants facing job joining dates, visa expiry deadlines or gaps in employment authorization often have no real choice. If they wait for normal processing, they risk losing jobs, wages or legal work continuity.

As of March 2026, premium processing for OPT and STEM OPT applications costs $1,780 in addition to the regular filing fee. For H-1B and L-1 petitions, the premium processing fee is $2,965, on top of other government filing charges.

Once attorney fees and mandatory expenses are added, the total cost of a single immigration filing can easily cross $10,000, practitioners say. This has become a serious burden for international students paying from their own pockets and small businesses sponsoring foreign workers.

Regular processing timelines for many applications now reportedly stretch from three to eight months. OPT applications may take several months, while H-1B extensions and transfers without premium processing can remain pending for long periods.

In many cases, premium processing is now giving applicants the kind of timeline they once expected from regular processing.

For F-1 OPT and STEM OPT, premium processing offers a 30-calendar-day timeline. For H-1B, L-1 and I-140 petitions, the timeline is generally 15 business days.

Immigration attorney Poorvi Chothani said several employees who applied for H-1B extensions last year received the 240-day automatic work authorization extension, but their H-1B extensions are still pending.

In many such cases, companies eventually pay for premium processing. In others, employees themselves pay because of the anxiety caused by long delays.

For applicants dependent on employment authorization documents, delays can directly affect their ability to work legally. A missed approval deadline can lead to loss of wages, delayed onboarding or disruption in immigration status.

International students are among the worst affected. Students on OPT have strict unemployment limits after graduation. If work authorization approval is delayed, their ability to join employers or continue working legally can be affected.

Many students graduating this summer have reportedly chosen premium processing to make sure their OPT applications are approved before graduation and joining dates. Several fear losing job offers if their employment authorization documents do not arrive on time.

Without approved OPT work authorization, international students cannot legally begin employment in the US. Delays can also impact payroll, onboarding and future visa timelines.

Students moving from OPT to H-1B also face uncertainty during the cap-gap period between the expiry of student work authorization and the beginning of H-1B employment.

Any delay during this period can disturb employment continuity and push applicants toward premium processing.

The rising dependence on premium processing has also raised questions about USCIS backlogs.

Lawyers argue that premium processing revenue was supposed to help fund faster adjudications and reduce delays. Yet, the very backlogs that make premium processing necessary continue to persist.

Critics say applicants are effectively paying extra to receive the timely service that should have been available under normal processing.

As Khanna put it, premium processing has become a “tax on urgency”; an urgency created by the system itself.