Nebraska Service Center (NSC) in our conference call this morning 13July2017, NSC confirmed that H4 status must be approved before an EAD may be extended. There is no automatic employment authorization granted by the timely filing of H4 and EAD extension requests within the current H4 and EAD validity dates.

Further, there were a number of H1B extensions filed with premium processing in March 2017 with concurrently filed H4 and EAD extensions. Although, the H1B petitions were adjudicated with premium processing. Many H4 and EAD extensions were not processed at the same time as the premium processed H1B. Unfortunately, there is not an expedited processing available to those H4 and EAD extensions. And, those H4 and EAD extension requests are likely to be adjudicated within normal processing times.