December 21, 2007

Increased Fees for Visas to the United States in the New Year

On December 20, 2007, the U.S. Department of State (DOS) issued regulations that will increase nonimmigrant visa, or “machine-readable visas” (“MRV”) and border crossing card (BCC) issuance fees to $131 and immigrant visa issuance fees to $355 on January 1, 2008.

Beginning January 1, 2008, the FBI will begin charging the DOS to complete fingerprinting and name checks for nonimmigrant and immigrant visa applications. The increase in visa issuance fees is equal to the total of the fees that the DOS must pay to the FBI to check fingerprints against its Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) as well as the DOS’ costs in collecting the fingerprints.

The DOS issued these regulations as an emergency act to ensure sufficient funds to meet the costs of completing the fingerprinting and name checks required under the heightened security measures implemented since 2004.