Washington: The US on Monday announced it will increase the fee of issuing non-immigrant visas in all categories with effect from June 04 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 USD 131 fee set on January 01, 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 USD 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 fiancé(e)s of US citizens will be USD 350.
The fee for E visas for treaty-traders and treaty-investors will be USD 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.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 11:26