Thread: Biden Administration Raises Immigration Fees to Fund Its Border Crisis

Biden Administration Raises Immigration Fees to Fund Its Border Crisis






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February 5, 2024





Government Relations










FAIR Take | February 2024



The agency in charge of immigration and naturalization announced last week it had finalized a massive regulation that adjusts fees for nearly every benefit, the first time fees have been raised in 15 years. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), a part of the Department of Homeland Security, rolled out their new fee schedule, which is intended to generate revenue to cover their increased workload, a direct result of the Biden Administration’s open-border policies.

USCIS is not only responsible for legal immigration programs, including temporary foreign worker visas, work authorizations, green cards, and naturalizations, but it is also responsible for asylum and humanitarian related benefits.

The agency noted that fees are being increased by about 26 percent on average, with fees for certain benefits increasing by 200 percent while fees for naturalization were intentionally suppressed.

USCIS touted the rule saying new revenues will allow the agency to “continue using innovative solutions to improve customer experience and stem backlog growth.” In the same breath, the agency reiterated its request for Congress to provide taxpayer funding, which it said “continues to be necessary to sustainably and fully address the increased volume of caseloads associated with recent border crossers, including by hiring additional USCIS personnel to help right-size a system that was not built to manage the number of cases USCIS receives.”

The number of asylum applications pending is at a record high. The workload for USCIS has increased in recent years thanks to the border crisis, with asylum applications increasing from 400,000 at the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 to over 1.08 million today.

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there are 1,081,004 asylum applications pending with the agency today. USCIS received 455,054 new asylum applications in fiscal year 2023 alone. The agency only completed roughly 54,000 in the same year, an average of 148 completions per day.

In addition to this, several other provisions of the rule are noteworthy. The new rule:

• Establishes a new fee of $600 to be paid by employers seeking nonimmigrant workers or sponsoring them for green cards to be used to cover asylum adjudications. Specifically, the fee may be used to help fund the Biden’s Administration’s controversial asylum regulations that are being challenged in court. While nonprofit employers will not have to pay this Asylum Program fee, it will generate around $313 million and implies that this revenue will help reduce backlogs and processing times.

• Expands the population who are eligible for a 50% reduction in fees for naturalization applications. Specifically, those with household incomes at or below 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines don’t have to pay the full rate of $710. USCIS initially proposed a discount for those with household incomes at or below 200 percent, but increased the threshold “in recognition of the financial gains immigrants obtain with naturalizations and the benefits that the United states obtains from new naturalized citizens.”

• Codifies criteria that the agency will use to determine if an applicant or petitioner is eligible for a fee waiver. If an applicant or petitioner demonstrates an inability to pay, they may make a request in writing, which can be made informally on any paper and no longer required to be requested on a form. The agency said mandating the public to fill out a form would create additional burden on requesters. In the last several years, USCIS has waived anywhere between $207 million to $367 million in fees for those seeking benefits, which are ultimately covered by other benefit seekers.

From the USCIS Final Fee Rule.

• Expands fee exemptions for Special Immigrant Juveniles and other humanitarian visa petitioners (such as victims of crime and trafficking), Afghan and Iraqi translators, and families pursuing international adoption. As stated specifically in the rule, “when fee waivers and exemptions are provided for a population, the cost of the immigration benefit request for which the fee is lowered must either be recovered in the form of higher fees for another group, or USCIS’ limited funding reserves must be depleted to cover those costs.”

• Includes a 2,050 percent increase in the H-1B registration process fee, which is paid by high tech employers seeking to bring in H-1B workers. The H-1B registrations received every year are the first step before an employer can apply for a visa. The registrations are not an adjudication; rather, the process to approve them is automated. The fee to register in the lottery will increase from $10 to $205.

• Increases significantly the fees to be paid by those seeking to raise funds through the Immigrant Investor Program, known as the EB-5 Program, which provides citizenship to those who invest $1 million or more in a commercial enterprise. The fee revenues from this program are intended to be used to reduce fees on other benefits. For example, the filing fee for the investor petition increases from $3,675 to $11,160, and the fee to establish a regional center would increase from $17,795 to $47,695.

• Provides a $50 discount for applicants who seek to file online (versus paper filing). In recent years, the agency has moved to more online filing, although the effort has been slow.

The new fee rule, which goes into effect on April 1, 2024, is the first time the Biden Administration has raised immigration fees. In 2021, the administration scuttled the Trump Administration’s rule, which increased fees for benefits by 21%. Before that rule, and the last time fees increased for immigration benefits at USCIS, the Obama Administration increased fees at a rate of 21% in 2008.

In addition to raising fees in the rule, President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas requested that Congress appropriate $755 million in taxpayer funding for USCIS in the emergency supplemental request. Their budget request, which is currently under consideration with other foreign aid funding, would be used to hire additional asylum officers and adjudicators.



https://www.fairus.org/biden-immigra...-border-crisis


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