5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable
Submit a USCIS fee rule raising fees and limiting fee waivers
Printed page 146 5. Department of Homeland Security
“The incoming Administration should immediately submit a fee rule that reflects such an increase. Aside from an increase in all fees, the rule should drastically limit the availability for fee waivers and should implement a fee for asylum applications.”
What has happened
- Partially done
DHS issued an interim final rule codifying the immigration fees Congress created in H.R.1, including "the asylum and annual asylum fees, including the consequences of non-payment", the new Form I-94 fee and the retention of the Form I-589 filing fee for every application. The asylum application fee the Quote specifically asks for now exists and is codified. Premium processing fees were raised for inflation on 2026-01-12 and a naturalization fee adjustment was proposed on 2026-06-23. The ask stops there: there has been no rule raising all fees across the board, and no rule drastically limiting fee waivers — USCIS's Request for Fee Waiver collection was renewed unchanged on 2026-07-24. Fee increases and an asylum fee, yes; the waiver crackdown, no.
- Attempted
USCIS proposed the EB-5 fee rule, the first fee rulemaking of the window. A proposal for one visa category, not the across-the-board increase the Quote wants.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
The fee rule the Quote asks for arrived in pieces, driven by the statutory fees Congress created in the reconciliation act rather than by a comprehensive USCIS fee schedule rewrite.
- One more piece, 2026-08-25 (found 2026-09-10). DHS proposed a $103,265 fee payable at filing for every cap-subject H-1B petition (FR 2026-17324, 91 FR 54817, RIN 1615-AD20), as “a dedicated revenue mechanism to help recover a portion of the federal government’s costs of administering the lawful immigration system”. It is a large increase for one petition type and says nothing about fee waivers, so it is the same kind of piece as the EB-5 and naturalization proposals and moves neither limb this item is held at partial on. Recorded as an event on #333 (the H-1B ask), where the fee bears on the program’s shape; here it is a note. The full text was read on 2026-09-11. It has no provision on fee waivers, and it mentions waived and exempt requests only as costs DHS has historically spread across fee payers.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- USCIS fee rule
- ID
- 339