Dewey

The President's FY2021 Budget proposal on page 163 of this document (numbered page 153) says "The Budget proposes to add a 10 percent surcharge on all requests received by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, including applications for citizenship, adjustment of status, and petitions for temporary workers. These collections would be deposited into the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury for deficit reduction."

I thought currently the fees are supposed to cover processing costs? This wording introduces an additional 10% tax on each and every step in the immigration process.

lansbury

The rules get changed and amended over time. There is no guarantee things will ever stay they same. Sometimes the changes are an improvement, other times a detriment. This is one of the reasons I took citizenship at the first opportunity. Who knows what is going to get changed going forward. Even the UK made getting spouse visas a lot harder, some time ago.

The fee is indeed meant to cover the costs, but there isn't anything that prohibits them exceed costs.

scrubbedexpat099

I think all the changes over recent years have upped costs, a lot of them do not reflect true costs, supposed to break even, not that it matters this is just a tax for the general fund.

civilservant

Since there is zero chance of this budget ever becoming law, it doesn't really matter.

Congress holds the power of the purse, not the President.

Pulaski

I am not sure what you mean by that - the budget process is for the President to submit a proposed budget to Congress, and Congress then approves the budget, or some variation of it. Obviously there is some horse-trading to get the budget approved, but to say that "there is zero chance of this budget ever becoming law" misses the point that most of it will be approved, and at this point nobody no knows what bits will survive the negotiation process.

civilservant

Most of it,

Ergo, THIS proposed budget, in it's current form, will never become law.

I tend not to ascribe meanings to words beyond their established norms.

Dewey

That's why I'm resigned to this actually taking effect, the budget proposes closing entire functions of the federal govt so the folk on the hill will be busy protecting their constituency but who speaks for immigrants? Like Lansbury I took US citizenship to stop paying USCIS fees - now I find other stuff comes along to take its place, like needing to get a REAL ID compliant drivers license in Virginia before October, bureacracy...

retzie

Well, they're already trying to appropriate USCIS funds to cover ICE costs (see other thread). I guess someone, somewhere found out that immigrants generate free money. Got a hole in your budget? Slap an increase/surcharge on your legal (non)immigrants...

Considering the US higher education system, at a minimum, will collapse without relatively affordable foreigners to bring in as faculty, it will be interesting to see where this new road will take us.

zzrmark

When looking through the proposed cuts and reforms this seems like a minor hardship. Veterans, those on medicare and medicaid, native Americans, farmers, the disabled, low wage renters, those affected by mining practices, naturalists, environmentalists, motorists, federal employees, to mention but a few, are all going to have something to gripe about.