Post quite a few speculations, the US citizenship and Immigration Services has today announced the adjustments in the fees required for most applications and petitions of immigration that will be effective from December 23rd this year.
In line with the requirements of the respective law, USCIS needs to mandatorily conduct fee reviews and revise it, every two years in order to ascertain the funding volumes. USCIS works with the assistance of the fees paid by the applicants and petitioners for immigration benefits. With passage of time, the monetary demands increase and to maintain a balance and infrastructure, this revision is required. However it is not necessary that revision is made every two years, it happens only when the accumulated fees is unable to meet the needs.
The revision due on December this year will be the first one in the last six years tenure and that will come to 21 percent weighted average for most of the applications and petitions. The increase has been arrived upon post detailed analysis of multiple activities performed by USCIS including fraud detection, national security, customer service, case processing etc. in addition to other waivers and all that are allowed to the applicants and petitioners. All these activities are totally funded by the fee that is paid by the applicants and petitioners for immigration benefits.
The rule announced by the USCIS clearly shows the summary of current and new fees in a tabular form for clarity. The same (new fees) can also be found on the Form G-1055, Fee Schedule and website. All the applicants and petitioners for whom the applications and petitions would be marked or filed post December 23rd will have to include the new fees for further processing.
What has changed?
- A modest fee increase of $45, or 8 percent, from $595 to $640 for Form N-400, Application for Naturalization
- The fee for Form N-600, Application for Certificate of Citizenship, and N-600K, Application for Citizenship and Issuance of Certificate Under Section 322, will increase from $550 or 600 to $1,170
- A new fee of $3,035 is required for Form I-924A, Annual Certification of Regional Center