U.S. proposes rise in immigration fees

U.S. proposes rise in immigration fees

	Published : Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:07 By : Agencies Print this Story

WASHINGTON (AFX) - The Bush administration is proposing to nearly double the cost of becoming an U.S. citizen and drastically raise the cost of becoming a legal permanent resident.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, announced Wednesday it wants to raise the application fee for citizenship from $330 to $595 and the fee for becoming a legal permanent resident from $180 to $1,370.

'As a fee-based agency we must be able to recover the cost necessary to administer an efficient and secure immigration system that ultimately improves service delivery, prevents future backlogs, closes security gaps and furthers our modernization efforts,' said Emilio Gonzalez, CIS director.

The agency said the new fees would reduce average application processing times by the end of September 2009.

Fees for a wide variety of immigration services would rise an average of 66 percent.

Applicants now pay a $70 fingerprinting fee, and the agency wants to raise that to $80. Fees also are paid for things such as work permits, replacing lost green cards and petitions to adopt orphans from other countries.

The proposed fee increases would not be final until after a public comment period.

Congressional Democrats last week warned in a letter to Gonzalez that they planned to review the agency's analyses behind any proposed immigration fee increases.

The letter was signed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., immigration subcommittee chairman Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and immigration subcommittee chairwoman Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

Immigration advocates have been bracing for the expected jump in fees. William Ramos, Washington director for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said the increases are 'just going to be devastating to our communities.'

'It will basically create another obstacle for those who want to realize their dream of becoming American citizens,' Ramos said.

Citizenship and Immigration Services covers its costs with application fees. The agency is required to do a fee analysis every two years to determine whether money raised from fees is covering costs. The agency last raised its fees in 2004, citing the cost of more intense background checks in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Immigrant advocates long have argued that the agency's costs cannot be absorbed by application fees. They want Congress to appropriate money to help pay costs.

Large fee increases would be heavily felt in the Asian community, where two-thirds of the population in the U.S. is foreign-born, said Traci Hong, director of the immigration program for the Asian American Justice Center.

About 70 percent of foreign-born Asians in the country become American citizens, a high rate for immigrants. Hong worried that higher naturalization fees would slow that rate.