The U.S. Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") announced a final rule that tweaks fees for certain immigration and naturalization benefit requests in order to ensure U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ("USCIS") recovers its costs of services. USCIS led a comprehensive biennial fee review and decided that current fees do not recover the cost of providing adjudication and naturalization services. It also promotes online filing by reducing the fee by $10 applicants who turn in forms online that are electronically available.
Applications and petitions must be postmarked, or if sent by courier then time stamped on the courier slip, by October 1, 2020 to benefit from the existing fee amounts. Thereafter, the new fee amounts will apply.
Some fees are increasing only slightly or even dropping. Some are increasing tremendously. Of particular note is the reapplication of filing fees for EAD and advance-parole applications based on pending Green-Card applications.
There is still time to get the filings sent by the deadline, but one must act quickly.