Premium Processing Disparity

[newhampshire 0]

At the present, businesses (primarily corporations) are allowed to pay $1000 to have work visas approved in 15 days (guaranteed). From my research, I understand that the Vermont Service Center has approximately ten times the amount of premium accounts that other service centers do (while other service centers have about 30 accounts, the VSC had over 300). First, surely the 300 premium processing accounts for businesses take up a significant amount of staff time and resources that would otherwise be available to help ALL visa applicants, and not just businesses. Perhaps this is the reason the VSC is so backed up with other types of visa applications? Secondly, why is it that businesses are offered the opportunity to have their visa applications processed in two weeks, while other applicants have to wait months and years for processing? Businesses not only get two week processing, but they get a special telephone number and e-mail to contact the Vermont Service Center directly to check on the status of their applications, whereas other applicants have no access to the service centers, only a national toll-free line that provides no real information. Are businesses more important than citizens, families, and other legal immigrants? And if the explanation is that the $1000 fees add up to money for more staffing to process other visa applications, where is the money, where is the staff, and why is the process still so slow and so backlogged? Finally, why should anyone have to pay an extra $1000 to get the service they should get anyway (the service that the staff is paid to provide)? It’s obviously possible to process visa applications faster – so why are service centers choosing to process the majority of applications at an absurdly slow pace?

[cmartyn 0]

Unless you have Corp or LLC after your name, nobody cares about you. Especially the government. These premium processed Visas are mostly for Indian "Software Engineers" who are needed to do business analysis and system design. Because there are not enough Americans willing to design software for 15K / year.

Edited June 30, 2006 by cmartyn

[Gomez 3]

Unless you have Corp or LLC after your name, nobody cares about you. Especially the government. These premium processed Visas are mostly for Indian "Software Engineers" who are needed to do business analysis and system design. Because there are not enough Americans willing to design software for 15K / year.

lol but true

[Yodrak 7]

newhampshire,

A few observations:

- The USCIS SCs do not process visa applications of any kind, including work visas.

- The USCIS SCs do process many, many other kinds of applications other than visa petitions, and the visa petitions are a rather small percentage of the total volume.

- The VSC has for many years, up until the halt of processing to implement IMBRA, been the fastest of the SCs in processing I-129f petitions, although not so fast at processing I-130 petions and horrible at processing I-751 applications.

- In summary I don't think it can be deduced that having 300 premium processing accounts v 30 for other SCs significant affects the processing times for thousands, perhaps 10s of thousands, of other cases at the VSC.

As to why the VSC has so many more premium processing cases than other SCs, look at the nature of its service territory.

Yodrak

At the present, businesses (primarily corporations) are allowed to pay $1000 to have work visas approved in 15 days (guaranteed). From my research, I understand that the Vermont Service Center has approximately ten times the amount of premium accounts that other service centers do (while other service centers have about 30 accounts, the VSC had over 300). First, surely the 300 premium processing accounts for businesses take up a significant amount of staff time and resources that would otherwise be available to help ALL visa applicants, and not just businesses. Perhaps this is the reason the VSC is so backed up with other types of visa applications? Secondly, why is it that businesses are offered the opportunity to have their visa applications processed in two weeks, while other applicants have to wait months and years for processing? Businesses not only get two week processing, but they get a special telephone number and e-mail to contact the Vermont Service Center directly to check on the status of their applications, whereas other applicants have no access to the service centers, only a national toll-free line that provides no real information. Are businesses more important than citizens, families, and other legal immigrants? And if the explanation is that the $1000 fees add up to money for more staffing to process other visa applications, where is the money, where is the staff, and why is the process still so slow and so backlogged? Finally, why should anyone have to pay an extra $1000 to get the service they should get anyway (the service that the staff is paid to provide)? It's obviously possible to process visa applications faster – so why are service centers choosing to process the majority of applications at an absurdly slow pace?

Edited June 30, 2006 by Yodrak

[babybunny 2]

Unless you have Corp or LLC after your name, nobody cares about you. Especially the government. These premium processed Visas are mostly for Indian "Software Engineers" who are needed to do business analysis and system design. Because there are not enough Americans willing to design software for 15K / year.

[newhampshire 0]

See my avatar - United Corporations of America flag. Instead of stars, we have corporate logos.

[morocco4ever 63]

Just from a quick glance it appears that only Vermont and California are processing I-130's for spouses. You say it is the most back logged, but it is about a week ahead of California.

I say you just relax, this is a long tedious process, and you can't fight them, so just go with it. You will someday soon be reunited.