Immigration

Lawyers
Since 1995

May 11, 2016

U.S. Immigration Service Wants

More of Your Money (Regardless of
Its Quality of Service Delivery)
By Richard Herman, Immigration Lawyer

Are you getting a 21 percent increase in pay at your job this year?
Didnt think so.
This year, in one big swoop, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service believes it
deserves a 21% increase in the fees in collects from applicants seeking
immigration benefits.
What, has Trump already taken over?
For those of us who deal with the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service every
day, often witnessing long delays and incompetence in adjudicating applications
for immigration benefits, the idea of the agency INCREASING their alreadyexpensive application fee schedule is, well, simply absurd.
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The Department of Homeland Security, hell-bent on spending billions on arresting

and deporting bus boys, gardeners and the largely-law-abiding parents of U.S.
citizen children, now want to increase the toll for those who are applying for U.S.
citizenship, those U.S. citizens applying for a green card for a foreign-born spouse,
or companies seeking to sponsor a foreign-born worker.
The proposed regulation, published on May 4, 2015, would raise the filing fees for
certain immigration applications by an average of 21 percent.
While the proposal for rate hikes for family-based I-130 petition is 27 percent,
proposals to increase rates for employment include 42 percent for the I-129
petition (used for H1B, L-1 E-2, TN and other non-immigrant categories) and for
the I-140 petition (used for EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 immigrant visa), and a whopping
145 percent for the I-526 petition required for EB5 immigrant investor petitions.
The proposed rule also outlines new tiered fee structure for naturalization: a
standard filing fee for majority of applicants, a lower for those whose family
income is more than 150% but less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines,
and no fee for some applicants in the military and others who qualify for a fee
waiver.

Why the overall drastic increases in fees?

The U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service delivers the pat bureaucratic answer
that the increase is needed to recover costs for their services and to maintain
adequate services.
While USCIS has done a better job over the years in improving customer service,
there are still gaping holes in quality, efficiency and speed of service delivery.
As Donald Trump has demonstrated, immigrants are an easy punching bag and are
not a formidable lobby group.
At least not yet
As recent demographic shows, 86 percent of all population growth from 2000 to
2010 in the U.S. comes from Asians and Latinos. As the foreign-born, which
constitutes about 42 million people and about 13% of the population, begin to flex
their political muscle, both at the polls and in running for elected office
themselves, we will hopefully witness a sleeping giant emerge.
Not only to beat back the ugly nativism espoused by Trump, by also the price
gouging by an immigration agency that wastes billions each year.
There is a 60 day public comment period on this proposed fee increase.
Information on proposed rate hike, and how to register your public comment, can
be found here at the Federal Register.
In the meantime, everyone who anticipates filing for an immigration benefit in the
near future, should consider filing their petition before the government raises their
fees.