Trump plan would increase citizenship application fee by $570

The Trump administration unveiled a plan Monday that would charge legal immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship $570 more in application fees while eliminating waivers and fee reductions for low-income applicants. The proposed regulation by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would increase the fees for citizenship requests from $760 to $1,330 for paper applications and from $710 to $1,280 for online filings. Application fees to ask USCIS to reconsider a citizenship request denial would jump by $645. The plan would also eliminate fee waivers for citizenship cases, as well as a fee reduction option for immigrants whose household income is at or below 400% of the federal poverty line. Fee exemptions for service members seeking citizenship would remain in place. The changes won't take effect immediately, since they're part of a proposed regulation that still has to undergo further steps in the federal government's rulemaking process. The public will be allowed to submit comments for or against the changes over a 60-day window. In its plan, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees USCIS, said the fee hikes are necessary to fully subsidize the processing of citizenship applications, especially in light of Trump administration efforts to more heavily scrutinize applicants. Unlike most federal agencies, USCIS is largely funded by the fees it charges. …