U.S. Nonimmigrant Visa Application Fees to Increase on June 4, 2010

Henry Chang | May 24, 2010 in United States Immigration | Comments (0)

On May 20, 2010, the Department of State (“DOS”) published an interim final rule in the Federal Register to increase nonimmigrant visa application processing fees, also known as the Machine-Readable Visa (“MRV”) fee, and Border Crossing Card (“BCC”) fees. The interim final rule also establishes a tiered structure with separate fees for different nonimmigrant visa categories. The new fees are scheduled to go into effect on June 4, 2010.

According to DOS website, it is increasing fees to ensure sufficient resources to cover the rising cost of processing nonimmigrant visas. The fee increase applies both to nonimmigrant visas placed in passports and to border crossing cards issued to certain applicants in Mexico.

According to DOS, the new, tiered fee structure was created to cover the higher unit costs for processing certain categories of nonimmigrant visas that are more complicated and require more in-depth consideration than most other categories of nonimmigrant visas. For a number of reasons, including new security enhancements, DOS believes that the $131.00USD MRV fee set on January 1, 2008 no longer covers the current, actual cost of processing nonimmigrant visas.

As of June 4, 2010, the following MRV fees will be applicable:

  1. Applicants for all visas that are not petition-based, including B-1 tourist and B-1 business visitor visas and all student (F, M) and exchange visitor (J) visas, will pay a fee of $140.00USD.
  2. Applicants for petition-based visas will pay an application fee of $150.00USD. These categories include:
    • H visa for temporary workers and trainees;
    • L visa for intracompany transferees;
    • O visa for aliens with extraordinary ability;
    • P visa for athletes, artists and entertainers;
    • Q visa for international cultural exchange visitors; and
    • R visa for religious occupations.
  3. The application fee for K visas for fiancé(e)s of U.S. citizens (and presumably K-3 spouses of U.S. citizens) will be $350.00USD.
  4. The fee for E visas for treaty-traders and treaty-investors will be $390.00USD.

Comments are closed.