US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced this week that beginning December 2, 2019, the agency is increasing the fee to request premium processing for certain employment-based petitions. The premium processing fee will increase to $1,440 (currently set at $1,410) for Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, and Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker. The agency notes that the premium processing fee was last increased in 2018 and that the increase “reflects the full amount of inflation from the implementation of the premium processing fee in June 2001 through August 2019 based on the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (CPI-U).” Premium processing is requested using Form I-907 and is an optional service for certain petitioners filing Forms I-129 or I-140. Filing a premium processing request with the additional fee will result in a fifteen-calendar day response time. USCIS.gov has additional information about filing cases via premium processing including filing addresses.