Tue. Dec 3rd, 2024

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New US visa and immigration fees planned

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US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is planning a new visa and immigration fee structure that will prevent legal US citizenship from being restricted to the ‘very wealthy’, as per a report issued by Newsweek.

In a new interview, USCIS director Ur Jaddou said: “Number one, we accept the US immigration system should not be reserved to the wealthy.”

At the height of the Covid pandemic, USCIS, which is funded entirely by fees paid for US visa and immigration applications, was on the verge of furloughing almost 70% of its 20,000 employees in the summer or 2020, amid fears that its income would dry up following a COVID-induced visa and travel ban imposed by previous US President, Donald Trump.

US visa and immigration fees

However, despite those fears, USCIS officials went on to report that the office would end the year with a ‘huge surplus’.

Ur Jaddou said: “A temporary recruiting freeze, spending controls and no longer requiring new biometric information for renewal benefits. Which started in March 2020, went a long way toward saving USCIS.”

The operating costs for USCIS amount to roughly $5 billion every year. However, at the end of the current fiscal year on September 30, USCIS had stores of $1.5 billion. Jaddou said: “This is the place where we need to be. Fees on wealthier candidates have also helped to support different tasks, like asylum.”

“I do understand what the issues were and how they’ve been ‘resolved’ — I need to say that in quotes since we have an unsteady situation, but we’re pretty strong.”

Questions about USCIS’ work

Fears over USCIS’ financial state sparked inquiries over how the office was run. Commenting on USCIS’ finances last year, a previous Democratic representative for a Miami district, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, said that around 70% of calls to her office were in relation to the work of USCIS.

Previous Trump government officials have claimed that USCIS returns from the brink of bankruptcy. It was down to raking in ‘higher than expected’ fees and ending some contracts.

The Trump administration did introduce a raft of changes to USCIS. Including the extension of the fraud investigations unit and pushing for US visa and immigration applications. To be rigorously checked to ensure that immigrants were self-sufficient enough to remain in the country.

USCIS interview

In October 2020, Ur Jaddou stunningly recited key financial and operational metrics. From memory and insisted that a fiscal review should be the primary goal of the new USCIS director.

[What happens to your H-1B visa after a layoff?]

USCIS recently delivered a list of ‘accomplishments’ following the end of the fiscal year on September 30. On that list was the naturalization of 855,000 individuals, 172,000 work-based green cards granted. And help for a huge number of Afghans and their families who arrived in the US after the end of the 20-year battle in Afghanistan.

However, despite the agency’s so_-called successes, wait times for US citizenship applications grew significantly in the past year. Meanwhile, there are huge backlogs in US visa and immigration processing caused by the Covid pandemic.

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