This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Taryn Druge, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.
The 2025 budget reconciliation bill, better known by its stage name “One Big Beautiful Bill,” passed the House last month and is under consideration in the Senate. The Big Beautiful Bill (“BBB”) both increases immigration fees and, in important ways, changes the function of fees within the immigration system.
First, let’s look at the fee increases. Here are a few of the most notable items:
- Anyone caught crossing the border illegally will immediately be assessed a $5000 “apprehension fee.” This is a truly remarkable change. Fines for criminal violations are common under U.S. law, but that requires an adjudication of guilt; civil penalties are common under U.S. law, but that, too, requires a finding of liability. The BBB says that the fine will be assessed either by immediate confiscation of any cash the migrant may be carrying, or by the creation of a civil debt.
- Applying for asylum is currently free. If the BBB passes in its current form, it will cost $1000 to apply for asylum. In addition, every year that application is pending, the asylum seeker will have to pay a fee of $100. It is unclear what will happen if you forget to pay the fee, but our bet is: automatic denial of the application. Aficionados of public choice theory will note that delays in asylum adjudication will now benefit the government, both by increasing revenue for applicants who manage to stick with it and by decreasing backlogs via robo-termination. The backlog will be lucrative, too. The Arlington Asylum Office – just one of many asylum offices in this country, but it’s ours! – ended the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year with 161,116 pending asylum applications. 2,496 applications were completed in this same time period.
- The first application for a work permit for asylum applicants, currently free, will cost $550 under the BBB.
- Sponsors of Unaccompanied Minors will have to pay a fee of $3500 to repay the government for the care of the minor. This is not a bond – this is a bill for the minor’s detention.
- If an Unaccompanied Minor fails to appear in court, her sponsor gets a $5000 bill.
- The green card application fee of $1440 will increase to $1500.
- Applicants for temporary protected status will have to pay $500 rather than $50.
Those are just the highlights. Read about all the proposed fees here.
None of these proposed fees or fee increases would offer fee waivers, which drop the filing fee for those experiencing severe financial hardship. Moreover, the bill also proposes eliminating lawfully present immigrants’ (such as asylees and DACA recipients) access to government benefits like SNAP and Medicare. Furthermore, the bill includes massive funding for immigrant detention and ICE; $45 billion toward building detention centers and $27 billion toward ICE’s deportation operations, among other allocations for immigration and border issues.
The final item we’d like to note is structural. As we’ve explained in previous advertorials, USCIS is self-funding. With rare, infrequent exceptions, Congress is not called upon to make contributions from the public fisc. These fee increases, in a break with tradition, will not go to USCIS, but instead will go straight to the U.S. Treasury. Unlike in previous fee-increase rounds, the upcharge isn’t meant to make the agency work better – it’s primarily meant to make the numbers work in the BBB, and secondarily, we think, to create an enforcement plan masquerading as a fee schedule.
As always, we are grateful for your questions and comments, and will do our best to respond.
