It’s very reasonable that when you’re paying thousands of dollars in fees for a service, you expect it to be done well. You certainly don’t expect your fees to be dramatically increased to coincide with the service being performed much slower and less efficiently, as has now been proposed for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
In a federal rule published this month, the Homeland Security subagency floated steep increases to fees for employment visas and green cards, raising costs that are already practically unaffordable for many employers and applicants. Visas like O-1, H-1B and L-1, for workers of various types, will all go up, with the latter increasing by more than double to $1,385 for just an application that may well be denied.
Any employer in any industry heavily dependent on foreign workers will tell you that the system is an expensive and bureaucratic hassle as is, and increasing costs right as we are trying to build out capacity in high-tech sectors like semiconductors is a terrible idea. In an economy with a continuing strong labor demand, what we need is more workers, not fewer.
Not long ago, we celebrated the high number of naturalizations during the prior fiscal year, while noting that this was in spite of the current bureaucracy, not because of it. Now, full applications for adjustment of status to permanent residency, a precursor to citizenship, could go up 130%, from $1,225 to $2,820. For a family with a spouse and a couple kids applying, that expense could be insurmountable.
USCIS claims these increases are necessary for it, as a fee-funded agency, to keep up with processing, cut through backlogs, and keep humanitarian applications free, yet maybe it should start by cleaning house. As pointed out by the Cato Institute’s David J. Bier, buried in the rule itself is the admission that USCIS is simply taking longer to review most forms than it did in the past, gumming up the works. Find efficiencies first, before foisting more costs on applicants.
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