U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has been very delayed in processing and sending receipts for OPT and STEM OPT applications. As a result of advocacy on the part of students, school officials and partner organizations, together with court litigation, on February 26, 2021, USCIS announcedflexibilities for students impacted by these receipt delays.

Please note that these flexibilities apply only to applications received on or after October 1, 2020, through May 1, 2021. In summary, for eligible applicants, USCIS will offer the following flexibilities:

• Retain the original filing date of a rejected filing if an applicant refiles his or her rejected application.
• Allow the 14-month period during which the 12 months of standard post-completion OPT must be completed, to start following the approval of the EAD, rather than the program end date. If you receive an approval with less than the full 12 month amount of OPT time requested, you can request a correctionof the EAD due to USCIS error. USCIS will issue a corrected EAD with a new end date to cover the full amount of OPT time recommended in the original application.

Although lockboxes will continue to reject OPT applications with a missing or deficient signature, if such an application is accepted by the lockbox and makes its way to a USCIS adjudicator, USCIS will issue an RFE for the proper signature instead of denying the application.