Listserv Archives

07/06/2007

Dear Subscribers:

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency has announced a new fee schedule for immigration benefit applications and petitions. The new fee schedule will increase processing fees charged by the federal government significantly, in many cases by 66%. The new fee schedule will be effective on July 30, 2007 and will affect cases submitted by the university that involve nonimmigrant and immigrant statuses, which are submitted to the USCIS with forms such as the I-129 and I-140. The processing fees for forms that are filed by foreign nationals for self-sponsored cases, such as the I-539, I-131, I-765 and I-485 are also increasing. A listing of the new fees may be viewed by clicking here

The Faculty and Scholars section of the International Center will continue to accept nonimmigrant (Form I-129 and Form I-539) and immigrant petitions (Form I-140 and Form I-485, concurrently filed with the Form I-140) that are submitted with the current processing fees until July 16, 2007. On July, 17 all USCIS petitions and applications that are submitted to the International Center must include processing fees that conform to the new fee schedule for the applicable application or petition. All petition packets received by the International Center on or after July 17 with processing fees that do not conform to the new fee schedule will be returned to the applicable hiring department/center with a request for the correct processing fee. Please note that the Premium Processing fee ($1000.00) remains unchanged, and the Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration Form ETA 9089 (Application for Permanent Labor Certification) continues to have no processing fees.

For detailed information about the increases, please visit our News page.