subject: Application Fees for Nonimmigrant Visas to be Increased from June 4, 2010 [print this page] Application Fees for Nonimmigrant Visas to be Increased from June 4, 2010
A temporary announcement on the increase in the processing fees for the non-immigrant visa application has been made by the Department of State on May 20, 2010. Starting June 4, 2010, the change in the processing fee, also called the Machine-Readable Visa (MRV) fee and Border Crossing Card (BBC) fees, will be effective.
In order to cover the higher cost of processing non-immigrant visas, the Department of State has increased the US non-immigrant visa fee. The increase in the visa fee is applicable to both non-immigrant visas that are placed in passports and border crossing cards that are granted to applicants in Mexico.
Since certain categories of non-immigrant visas are more complicated than the others, they require higher unit costs for their processing. To cover up this rising cost of processing, the Department of State has come up with the new fee structure.
The fund received from the application fees would be used by the Department of State to recover the processing cost of non-immigrant visas. The present cost of non-immigrant visas processing could not be covered by the previous US non-immigrant visa fee, which was $131.
As per the new fee structure, the US non-immigrant visa fee for all the non-petition based visas, including B1/B2 visitor visas and all student visas will be $140. For other petition-based visas, including H visa, L visa, O visa, P visa, Q visa, and R visa $150 will be charged as processing fees. K visa applicants would be charged a processing fee of $350 and those applying for E visa are required to pay $390.
The additional cost of service data will also be released by the Department of State simultaneously with the publication of the interim final rule. Further the Department will re-open the public comment period for an additional 60 days, at the conclusion of which the Department will take the public comments into consideration and release the final rule.
