Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) – A new fee from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is irking immigration attorneys, who say employers will have to spend an extra $600 to file for lawful immigration status on behalf of foreign nationals.
Attorney Rosanna Berardi says Citizenship and Immigration Services issued an announcement that their filing fees would increase. That itself was not a surprise to Berardi. “It has been a long arduous process. But what we didn’t know was that tucked inside of these fee increases, there was a new fee called the asylum program fee, which is mildly controversial, to say the least,” says Berardi. She says the fee requires any US corporation or four nationalists trying to work in the United States to pay $600 on top of the additional filing fees to help fund what she calls a dysfunctional asylum system.
Berardi says how that money will be used depends on who you listen to. “If you believe the government, that they will use this extra $600 per case, in an attempt to make their system better, hire more officers, reduced processing times, which sounds like a good idea,” says Berardi. The problem? “These things don’t happen overnight, and it seems very punitive,” notes Berardi. She adds this fee loudly and clearly says to corporate America the government will seek a bailout from them for the migrant situation.