US Proposes Massive Hike In H-1B, Other Visas’ Fees

US grants around 85,000 visas under the H-1B programme to foreigners to work at US companies to make good the shortage of locally available hands in speciality occupations.

The US government has proposed a steep hike in fees for immigration and naturalisation benefits, with the heftiest jumps slated for employment-based categories such as H-1B temporary work visas for speciality occupations, whose principal beneficiaries have been Indian, and intra-company transfers.

The fee for pre-registration for H-1B visas are proposed to go up by a massive 2,050 percent from $10 currently to $215, 70 percent for H-1 category that includes H-1B from $460 to $780, 201 percent for L visa for intra-company transfers to the US, from $460 to $1,385, and 129 percent for O category for workers with extraordinary skills.

EB-5 vias for investors and entrepreneurs – also called the millionaires’ visa – will also become expensive, going up by 204 percent to $11,160 from $3,675 currently.

Some charges are proposed to re- main the same, specially premium processing of all kinds of visas – at $2,500 – and some are slated to be reduced.

The US grants around 85,000 visas under the H-1B programme to foreigners to work at US companies to make good the shortage of locally available hands in speciality occupations.

Around 75 percent of these visas go to Indians, employed either its operations, which, it said, come mostly from these fees – at 98 percent – and not from congressional appropriation.

“The proposed fee rule is the result of a comprehensive fee review at USCIS. That review determined that the agency’s current fees, which have remained unchanged since 2016, fall far short of recovering the full cost of agency operations,” the agency said justifying the hike.

The agency’s 2020 revenue shrank by 40 percent due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the agency said, adding: