Employer and family-based immigration would see significant application fee increases under a proposal announced by the Biden administration this week. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which runs nearly entirely off of application revenues and has not implemented any increases for more than five years, announced a proposed rule that would add a $600 fee onto employer-based applications, while increasing at least one family-based application by that amount as well.
Immigration policy experts who looked at the initial announcement said that the good is that the Biden administration is adding new fee exemptions for certain humanitarian programs. Unlike the previous administration, the Biden administration is not proposing any fee to ask for asylum. Proposed fee increases would go to funding the asylum program, CBS News said.
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“Unlike most USCIS programs, the asylum division needs to be funded by Congress or other programs since it doesn't collect application fees,” CBS News reported. “USCIS said it decided to attach an asylum program fee to employment-based immigration petitions because employers have ‘more ability to pay’ higher fees. Doing so would allow USCIS to keep fee increases for other applications, such as permanent residency requests, low, the agency argued.”
Immigrants who are already in the U.S. and are eligible for naturalization would see what USCIS calls “modest” increases. Notably, the naturalization fee would increase by $120. USCIS said it was preserving “existing fee waiver eligibility for low-income and vulnerable populations and adding new fee exemptions for certain humanitarian programs.”
Immigration policy expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council said that the wealthy would see by far the heftiest fee increase. Filing for an “investor visa” would go from $3,675 to a “whopping” $11,160. Cornell University professor Stephen Yale-Loehr told CBS News that the proposal could face litigation from employers angered over the fee increases.
“The proposed fee rule is the result of a comprehensive fee review at USCIS,” the agency said. “That review determined that the agency’s current fees, which have remained unchanged since 2016, fall far short of recovering the full cost of agency operations.” USCIS Director Ur Jaddou said the proposal “allows USCIS to more fully recover operating costs for the first time in six years and will support the administration’s effort to rebuild the legal immigration system.”
But the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), which has steadily worked through public education events and congressional advocacy to increase naturalizations, expressed worry that the proposal will “disproportionately impact low-income and working communities seeking green cards or family reunions through non-immigrant petitions and employment-related visas.”
“Citizenship and other immigration benefits remain out of reach for so many lower-income individuals that even nominal fee increases will exacerbate current disparities in access,” NPNA Executive Director Nicole Melaku said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “At the same time, as we grapple with massive labor shortages and the continued economic fallout of the post-COVID economy, these increases could potentially undermine recent successes that USCIS has achieved towards reducing citizenship backlogs and restoring good faith among USCIS and potential applicants.”
Melaku is pointing to the more than 967,000 immigrants who became Americans on paper during the 2022 fiscal year, marking one of the highest rates in U.S. history. USCIS also said in its 2022 progress report that thanks in part to “crucial appropriations from Congress,” the net backlog of naturalization applications also saw a more than 60% reduction from the previous fiscal year. USCIS said that the proposed rule will go to public comment for 60 days. “Fees will not change until the final rule goes into effect, after the public has had the opportunity to comment and USCIS finalizes the fee schedule in response to such comments.”
Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., mirror similar concerns in a statement received by Daily Kos. “While we understand that USCIS is in a place of financial concern, we implore the agency to find a solution that does not pass along undue hardship to low-income immigrants,” Gallagher said. That could fall on Congress, but at this very moment, Republicans can’t even elect a speaker to get any work started.
The previous administration attempted to make the U.S. one of the few nations in the world to charge a fee to ask for asylum, under a proposal by unlawfully appointed Ken Cuccinelli. That proposal would have also eliminated most fee waivers for qualifying low-income immigrants, legal advocates said in a lawsuit filed in summer 2020. A court would block the rule that fall, citing the illegal appointment of officials like Chad Wolf.
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