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Fee Increases Make Path to Legal Immigration More Difficult

Posted November 10, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Federal Immigration Policy

When immigration fees skyrocketed three years ago, with some fees increasing by nearly 70 percent, applications for many forms of legal immigration and citizenship dropped dramatically. In fact, new citizenship applications fell by more than half in the months after the fee went up.

Now U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is about to do it again.

On Nov. 23, application fees will rise by an average of 10 percent. Homeland Security says the increase is needed due to declining revenues. But the revenues have gone down, in part because the fees are so high. With a the government fee for a simple green card application for the spouse of a US citizen now costing more than $1,000, many families have been priced out of bringing their relatives to the US legally. Advocates had called for the Obama administration to roll back fees to 2007 levels; instead the fees have been raised.

And the next price increase will no doubt be justified because of the fall in revenues likely to result from this new increase.

Tags : green card, immigration fees, obama, u.s. citizenship and immigration services

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