Along with the USCIS filing fee increase which went into effect on November 23, 2010, USCIS has revamped the guidelines, criteria and application process for filing fee waivers. While granting a waiver is still in USCIS's sole discretion, the process and qualifications are now more transparent. Which Forms are Eligible for a Fee Waiver? A [...]
On November 23, 2010, the pre-announced increase in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service ("USCIS") filing fees went into effect. All applications and petitions filed must now include the new and correct filing fee, or the filings will be rejected. We have written in the past about the need of this fee increase and our [...]
USCIS has announced that effective Tuesday, May 11, 2010, it would issue redesigned U.S. Permanent Resident Cards (also known as "green cards.") The redesign is mainly driven to incorporate new security features to deter counterfeiting, tempering and document fraud, generally. Features of the Redesigned Green Card Among the main features of the redesign: secure optical [...]
We wrote in September about the gap in expected revenue by USCIS following the filing fee increase of Summer 2007. We noted that the agency has a $282 million shortfall in expected revenues. As a result of the announced 2007 fee increase, USCIS saw a surge in applications and hiring in 2007, ahead of a hefty [...]