The US on Monday announced it will increase the fee of issuing non-immigrant visas in all categories with effect from June 4 so as to meet its increasing processing cost.
"The Department is increasing fees to ensure sufficient resources to cover the rising cost of processing non-immigrant visas," the State Department said in a statement.
For a number of reasons, including new security enhancements, the $131 fee set on January 1, 2008 no longer covers the current, actual cost of processing non-immigrant visas, it added.
Under the new schedule of fees, applicants for all visas that are not petition-based, including B1/B2 tourist and business visitor visas and all student and exchange visitor (F, M and J) visas, will pay a fee of USD 140, the State Department said.
Applicants for petition-based visas will pay an application fee of $150.
These categories include: H visa for temporary workers and trainees; L visa for intra-company transferees; O visa for aliens with extraordinary ability; P visa for athletes, artists and entertainers; Q visa for international cultural exchange visitors and R visa for religious occupations.
The application fee for K visas for fiance(e)s of US citizens will be $350.
The fee for E visas for treaty-traders and treaty-investors will be $390, the State Department said.
"The new, tiered fee structure was created to cover the higher unit costs for processing certain categories of non-immigrant visas that are more complicated and require more in-depth consideration than most other categories of non-immigrant visas," the statement said.
The State Department is required to recover, as far as possible, the cost of processing non-immigrant visas through the collection of the application fees.
