U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has recently announced that they are increasing the fees for numerous immigration benefit requests, effective December 23, 2016. Applications and petitions postmarked or filed on or after December 23, 2016 must include these new fees or USCIS will reject the submission.
The following are examples of new USCIS filing fees that affect many of our clients’ cases:
- I-140: $700
- I-485: $1,140 + $85 (biometric) = $1,225
- I-129: $460
- I-130: $535
- I-539: $370
- I-824: $465
- I-290B: $675
- N-400: $640
For a full table evidencing the increase in fees for each immigration benefit request, please click here.
USCIS is funded primarily by the fees paid by applicants and petitioners for immigration benefits, and the law requires USCIS to conduct fee reviews every two years to determine the funding levels required to administer the nation’s immigration laws, process benefit requests, and provide the necessary infrastructure to support services such as fraud detection and national security, customer service and case processing. This is the first fee increase in the past six years, with the increase being a weighted average of 21% for most applications and petitions.