Northwest Immigrant Rights Project is joining partner organizations and people around the country in a comment campaign to oppose a proposal from the Trump Administration that would significantly increase fees immigrant community members 
have to pay to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for a wide range of immigration applications. We are deeply concerned that this proposal will effectively price out tens of thousands of people from being able to obtain critical immigration protections or U.S. citizenship.
Submit a Comment
Over the past few decades, applying for a wide range of immigration benefits has become very expensive. To give you a couple of examples, when I became a lawful permanent resident in the late 1980s, the application for a green card was $60. Today, it is $1,225 for most applicants. Under the Administration’s proposal, this would jump to $2,195, an increase of 79 percent. When I became a U.S. citizen in 1994, the cost of the naturalization application at the time was $95. Today, it is $640, and the Administration’s proposal would raise it to $1,170, an 83% increase.
And these are just a couple of “low-lights” of this troubling proposal. The Administration would also increase fees for DACA recipients and, for the first time, impose an application fee for seeking asylum. The proposal would also eliminate the option to seek fee waivers for many applications, including the one to pursue U.S. citizenship.
USCIS is proposing these fee increases without any meaningful evidence that they would relieve case processing delays or otherwise improve services. In fact, the proposal seeks to shift some of these funds to pay for some ICE enforcement activities.
We hope you will join us in urging the Administration to withdraw this proposal by submitting a personalized comment through the template below, which was prepared by our colleagues at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). Tell this administration the people looking for protections in this country shouldn’t have to pay more for less!
You have until the end of the day on December 30th to submit comments, so make sure to take action today!
In Solidarity,
Jorge L. Barón, Executive Director
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