New Immigration Fees Effective July 30, 2007
The proposed increases in filing fees for most U.S. immigration applications and petitions will be effective as of July 30, 2007. The proposed increases were first published on February 1, 2007 in the Federal Register. According to the USCIS, the increases are needed to pay for the costs of adjudicating cases which have become more complex and fulfill security requirements. After about 60 days of period for public comments, the USCIS received thousands of comments. Based on these comments, some of the fee increases were reduced. However, most of the filing fees will still be increased by 2 to 3 times.
With the additional revenue generated by the fee increases, the USCIS expects that the processing times of applications will be reduced by 20 percent by the end of fiscal year 2009. Specifically, the agency expect to cut processing times on four most popularly applications by the end of fiscal year 2008 including I-90 (Application to Renew / Replace Green Card); I-140 (Immigrant Petition for Worker); I-485 (Application for Adjustment of Status) and N-400 (Application for Naturalization). For application fees for each application, visit this file http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/FinalUSCISFeeSchedule052907.pdf.
