Government to Increase Citizenship and Green Card Fees

From controversy residing over citizens arming themselves to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, to failed mandates aimed at ridding U.S. cities of undocumented aliens, immigration has recently been a hot debated topic in this country. To add to this heated topic, the U.S. government announced today that it would increase immigration fees--doubling, and in some cases, tripling the cost to apply for legal immigration status. Here are a few examples: to bring a foreign fiancee/fiance into the states will cost $455 (currently $170); a green card or permanent resident applications will set you back $930 (currently $325); finally, citizenship papers will cost $675 (currently $330).

It's funny that most statistics will show that many immigrants know more U.S. facts and history more than the native born citizens. With this new change in immigration fees, naturalized citizens will probably be better off than most native born Americans. People may legitimize that this fee increase is due to the new security features the government are putting into legal documents, such as digital finger printing and rfid tags to easily access your personal data. However, they should realize that these technology have been around for almost a decade now and its cost should not be that tremendous. What I see is that this is the government's way to collect the necessary money to fund the inflated government spending (i.e. Iraq). This move will certainly hinder many immigrants from naturalizing, and above all, this policy is reflective of the renewed movement to deter immigration from the United States.

READ