The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued Friday a final rule increasing fees for immigration benefit applications and petitions, including for travel document Form I-131, or advance parole, and Form I-129CW for petition for non-immigrant worker in the CNMI.
The advance parole application fee will increase to $360, from the current $305.
The petition for non-immigrant workers in the CNMI will become $325, from the current $320.
Biometrics fee will go up to $85, from the current $80.
The new fees will take effect on Nov. 23, 2010.
This comes five months after DHS proposed to raise these fees on June 11, 2010.
“Applications or petitions mailed, postmarked, or otherwise filed on or after Nov. 23, 2010, must include the new fee,” DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in its final rule on the fee schedule.
Rabby Syed, president of the United Workers Movement-NMI, said yesterday that the workers’ group will still ask DHS to reconsider its advance parole fee increase, and to insert a provision waiving the fee for those needing to exit and re-enter the CNMI for medical emergency and death in the family, among other things.
“Even the current advance parole fee of $305 is high, how much more the $360? A lot of workers here are now working 64 hours instead of 80 hours per pay period, and when they need to go home for emergency reasons or for death in the family, it would be hard for them to afford the $360 on top of other expenses. We hope DHS will still reconsider,” Syed told Saipan Tribune.
He said the United Workers Movement-NMI plans to send DHS another letter.
Form I-131 is required of foreign workers, students, investors and their dependents prior to leaving the CNMI for travel outside the U.S. and its territories, to be able to return to the Commonwealth under the same immigration status.
For travel to the U.S. mainland and territories like Guam, these same groups of individuals would need to apply for “parole.”
In this final rule, DHS increases the fees by a weighted average of 10 percent.
In the Sept. 24 Federal Register, DHS said it adopted the proposed rule with changes, both in response to comments and as a result of new information.
DHS said no modification to the final fees is made as a result of these changes.
However, DHS reduced the fee to $135 for adults and $105 for children, for an application for travel document, Form I-131, when it is filed to request a refugee travel document.
DHS also decided to permit a fee waiver for an application for travel document based on inability to pay when it is based on a request for humanitarian parole.
One commenter on the DHS proposed rule requested a reduction in fees or a fee waiver for the adjustment of status of family members within the two-year transition period of the implementation of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act or Public Law 110-229.
PL 110-229, which was signed in May 2008, placed CNMI immigration under federal control on Nov. 28, 2009.
Fee waivers are not generally available for employment-based immigration benefit requests.
Due to the unique circumstances present in the CNMI, however, DHS published an interim final rule that provided for a separate Form I-129 called the I-129CW, petition for non-immigrant worker in the CNMI. DHS provided in that rule that USCIS adjudicators may waive the fee for Form I-129CW in certain circumstances if the petitioner is able to show inability to pay.
“That authority will not take effect, however, until DHS has considered comments on the interim rule and published a final rule. Thus, the comment on fee treatment specific to the CNMI has been entered into the docket of that rule, and will be considered in drafting that final rule as well as other rules that will implement the CNRA,” DHS said. DHS has yet to issue a final rule.
Besides the I-129CW fee of $325, there is a supplemental CNMI education funding fee of $150 per beneficiary per year. The CNMI education funding fee cannot be waived.
USCIS, one of the component agencies of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is a fee-based organization with about 90 percent of its budget coming from fees paid by applicants and petitioners to obtain immigration benefits.
The law requires USCIS to conduct fee reviews every two years to determine whether it is recovering its costs to administer the nation’s immigration laws, process applications, and provide the infrastructure needed to support those activities. This proposed rule results from a comprehensive fee review begun in 2009.