APPLICATION FEES FOR NON-IMMIGRANT VISAS TO INCREASE ON JANUARY 1, 2008

armradio.am
19.12.2007 15:46

Effective January 1, 2008, the application fee for a US nonimmigrant
visa will increase from $100 to $131. This increase allows the
US Department of State and the US Embassy Yerevan to recover the
costs of security and other enhancements to the non-immigrant visa
application process.

Applicants who paid the prior $100 application fee before January
1 will be processed only if they are scheduled and appear for a
visa interview before January 31. Applicants who paid the prior
$100 application fee and appear for visa interviews after January
31, 2008 must pay the difference — $31 — before they will be
interviewed. They can pay this difference of $31 at the consular
section of the U.S. Embassy on the day of their scheduled interview.

The U.S. Department of State is required by law to recover the
cost of processing non-immigrant visas through the collection of the
Machine-Readable Visa application fee. Because of new security-related
costs, new information technology systems, and inflation, the $100
Machine-Readable Visa fee is lower than the actual cost of processing
non-immigrant visas. In fact, the $100 fee was already lower than
the cost of processing non-immigrant visas when the fee was reviewed
as a part of the cost of service study in 2004. The Department of
State has been absorbing the additional cost. We are now collecting
10 fingerprints from each applicant, and the cost charged by the
FBI to review those fingerprints no longer allow us to do this. The
application fee has increased twice since 9/11, the last time in 2002.