Malena Amusa

The Price of Citizenship Just Went Up

Today, the Citizen and Immigration Services under the Dept. of Homeland Security, will announce its plan to increase application fees for citizenship and permanent residency to cover its cost of business—background checks and office technology. The 80% hike would raise citizenship fees from $330 to $595 and permanent resident fees from $325 to $905. In two years, this will raise $2 billion.

In addition to the obvious problem—making it even harder for immigrants to gain their full rights as American citizens—this raises some other major questions:

1) Which immigrant groups will make it through this new, more expensive system and which will be forced to extend their stay as second-class Americans?

2) Why are citizenship rights in the current CIS a product to be bought, rather than distributed as a funded public service?

3) How much money are we spending to build that ridiculous fence on the border??

Posted at 11:51 AM, Jan 31, 2007 in News | Permalink | View Comments