U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, on January 4, 2023, proposed a new fee schedule that could drastically increase the immigration fees. The new fees have not gone into effect yet but could within the next few months.
USCIS’s proposed rule would:
- Maintain fee exemptions for humanitarian applications as well as opportunities for fee waivers for qualifying applicants.
- Increase the cost of applications for lawful permanent residence anywhere from 26%-130%, depending on the details of the applications.
- Raise costs to petition to remove conditions on residence by 76%.
- Escalate the cost of applying for religious workers visas by 86%.
- Eliminate the reduced fee to apply for permanent residence for a child.
- Charge higher fees for those applying for status using paper applications rather than online applications.
Under the current fee schedule, a family of four applying on paper for permanent residence and accompanying work authorizations for the parents would pay $3,950 in fees to USCIS. Under the proposed fee schedule, that same family would pay $7,460 in fees to USCIS if filing a paper application. If they instead applied online, they would pay $7,270 in fees to USCIS.
Based on this proposal, we highly recommend any of you who are thinking of filing your immigration paperwork to contact an immigration attorney as soon as possible so that you will be able to file before the fees increase.
If you would like to schedule a consultation with our office, give us a call at (972) 497-1017.