Laredo, Texas.- As of April 1, Citizenship and Immigration Services -USCIS- will increase prices of work visas and residence permits, in some cases, up to hundreds of dollars, in order to better finance and expedite the immigration process.
The corresponding registration process will increase from 10 to 215 dollars. While transfer applications for foreign executives or managers using a Visa-L nonimmigrant permit increase from 460 to 1,385. And the fee for the form used to request permanent residence will increase 26 percent to 1,440.
Under the new payment scheme, employers will have to pay part of the cost of processing people seeking employment in the US. That is, if a company wants to bring a foreigner to work in the country, it will affect them twice as much, since will pay higher fees for the procedures.
Matthew Gross, partner and co-chair of the Dallas office of BAL, a business immigration law firm, told the Dallas News that employers will suffer the consequences of the problems facing the country’s southern border in terms of irregular migration.
“They are passing the cost burden onto American employers, who are completely oblivious to the political problem at the border, simply by wanting to legally sponsor foreign workers in areas where they need talent,” Gross said.
The USCIS states that it covers 96 percent of its operating expenses with what it charges for its procedures, however, the agency alleges that there are many resources missing to process the additional volume of files it has. The agency indicates that it needs more staff, since it cannot cope with the number of cases it receives, and has not yet recovered from the blow caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, delaying hundreds of thousands of cases.
The USCIS Stabilization Act established premium processing fees—an optional service provided for certain types of cases that allows applicants to expedite the processing of their applications by paying an additional fee—which gives the Department of Homeland Security authority to adjust costs every two years.
After leaving these rates unchanged for three years prior to the Act’s passage, DHS is now increasing them. The adjustment increases certain premium processing prices from $1,500 to $1,685, from $1,750 to $1,965, and from $2,500 to $2,805.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is responsible for processing applications for green cards, naturalization and other immigration forms. Process times vary.
When the sponsor is a US citizen (known as the CR1 visa) it is 12 months.
When the sponsor is the owner of a “Green Card” (known as the F2A visa) is: 25 months.
Family-based Green Card applications (in other words, immediate family members including spouse of a U.S. citizen) for applicants who apply while lawfully present on another type of visa in the United States have an average of 12 months of wait, while if they are in other countries, such as Mexico, the process is more agile.
Visas for investors who seek to live almost automatically for these and their families may require amounts exceeding 800 thousand dollars, this is the so-called EB-5 that grants the “Green Card” to the investor and his family, wife and children under the age of 21 years. His average processing time is 20 months.
For specific information about EB-5 Investor Visas you can ask info@usacomercialservices.com or your immigration attorney in the United States.
