Wednesday, December 19, 2007

U.S. Visa Application Fees to Increase

Press Release
US Embassy in Phnom Penh

Effective January 1, 2008, the application fee for a U.S. non-immigrant visa will increase from $100 to $131. Fees for immigrant visas will increase by $20, to $355. These increases will allow the U.S. Department of State to recover the costs of security and other enhancements to the visa application process.

The State Department is required by law to attempt to recover the cost of processing visas through application fees. Because of new security-related costs, new information technology systems, and inflation, the current fees are lower than the actual cost of processing visas. In fact, the non-immigrant visa fee was already lower than the processing cost when the fee was reviewed as a part of a study in 2004. The Department has been absorbing the additional cost. Consular officers are now collecting 10 fingerprints from each applicant, and the cost charged by the FBI to review those fingerprints no longer allows the Department to absorb the excess.

Released December 18, 2007

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is just ridiculous! How much does the U.S. funding is following to Cambodia yearly? And how is much are they collecting money back from our poor people???? Do they really now need more to help cover the TEN FINGURES or rather HELP FUNDING PART OF THE just-approved $70 BILLION for the WAR Iraq/Afghanistan??? Someone got to help get some question marks off my head here. Oh dear U.S. friends!

Anonymous said...

Simple , If the processing costs are to high, reduce the embassy's staff wages and perks or sell that fuckin big embassy building and rent something smaller.