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

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Dec 20 2007

YEREVAN, December 20. /ARKA/. Effective January 1, 2008, the
application fee for a U.S. nonimmigrant visa will increase from
$100 to $131. This increase allows the U.S. Department of State and
the U.S. 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.