It's just gotten more expensive to apply for a work visa or green card.
Reports show that 96% of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services funding comes from filing fees, and filings fell during the pandemic along with revenue.
For the first time since 2016, costs jumped this week. The fee for an H-1B visa petition rose $320 to $780, and the registration fee jumped from $10 to $215. And there's a new $600 asylum program fee.
Houston immigration Attorney Emily Neumann says the employers bear the brunt of this. And all of this she says may make it harder to bring in workers.
Neumann says the agency is inefficient, processing times are too long, and there's nothing in this new fee schedule that requires them to do better.
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