First-Ever Fee Waiver Form Makes Its Debut
For the first time, USCIS is introducing a standardized fee waiver form. The new form, entitled “Form I-912, Request for Fee Waiver”, is available for use today. The new fee schedule also takes effect today.
Comments received during the development of the form reflected applicants’ concerns and experiences in requesting fee waivers. We used many of the recommendations they provided to make the fee waiver form and its instructions easy to understand.
The form identifies clear requirements for documenting a fee waiver request and the instructions give information on the methodology that USCIS uses to evaluate the requests.
We are also seeking feedback on a new guidance memorandum documenting our consolidated policy for reviewing fee waiver requests. Stakeholders and the general public are encouraged to visit www.uscis.gov/outreach to review the new memorandum and offer their input.
USCIS’s latest fee rule expands the availability of fee waivers to several new categories. The new fee schedule also increases fees by a weighted average of about 10 percent, but does not increase the fee on naturalization applications.
posted by USCIS Blog Team @ 2:06 PM
7 Comments
Subscribe in a reader
7 Comments:
Fee waiver scheme is the best thing to do to help the poor people.Its the important step taken by the government to help the poor people.
I agree with the need based fee waiver. It definitely a good idea in this instance.
Please consider the recapture of wasted visa since 2001 to clear out the current visa backlog. Any beneficiary of the recapture will be charged about $1,000 and they will love to pay that. That'll bring the revenue about $100 million.
I wonder how many people are going to ACTUALLY benefit from this program. A waiver is out there, true, but I would like to see how many people are denied the fee waiver, probably 0.001%. The stats will tell. Nice PR strategy, though.
It's unfortunate that after my family and I deprived ourselves of our basic needs just to pay our fees now the fees will be waived for others. In my humble opinion, only handicapped and minors should be exempted.
Believe me it is almost impossible to get a fee waived. My situation as an example:
While stationed under the U.S. Embassy Jakarta as an Active Duty U.S. Navy member I got married to an Indonesian national. We had to do do numerous background/security checks etc. for both DoD, DoN, and DoS. We were in the middle of the immigration process when my entire command (USNAMRU2) was told to vacate the country by the Indonesian government. We had to rush our paperwork and I had to put down my next commands address as the place to mail my wife's green card.
The card was supposedly delivered to the base post office but sent back because USCIS did not put my name as C/O. I have been informed that it was lost somewhere in the U.S Postal service.
USCIS refuses to send it again without the $485 fee. As a matter of principal I find it hard to pay again for something I had no control over, but now I have to go to Afghanistan and am extremely worried about my wife's status while I am over there for a year.
I guess I will have to swallow my pride and succumb to the extortion.
I didn't help that out of the dozens of calls i have put into USCIS over this matter I never got the same story twice.
I would like to see some more options for U.S Military members and their dependents.
@ Anonymous (posted above on March 11) - please leave another comment with your email address (preferably your .mil account). We won't post it here live - but we would like to get in touch.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home