Published on 05/18/2016
Hello I’m Vaughan de Kirby. I’m an investment immigration attorney here in San Francisco. Today I wanted to give you some very important information, whether it will affect your decision-making, I’m not sure, but it is important because it involves your filing fee with USCIS.
I’ve been practicing, as you may know, investment immigration for many years, and we’ve seen the filing fees remain the same. USCIS has finally done their study and decided that now is the time to raise fees.
The I-526, this is the first application you file in EB-5, is going from $1,500 to $3,675, so it’s going up over $3,600, more than doubled. Now you may be familiar with EB-5, and you’ll know that after two years of holding your Green Card, you’re going to file what is called an 829. Happily, USCIS has not raised this from the current filing fee. The current filing fee is $3,750. It will remain that fee in the future. The regional centers are going to pay a little bit more – they’re gong to move up to almost $18,000 for their I-924.
Now that you know these fees, I want to caution you – don’t rush into EB-5 in order to save $2,000. It’s very important. You’re making a significant investment for you and your family. You have immigration consequences as well as investment consequences. You want to make certain that you make that decision carefully. I hope these fees won’t affect your decision, but I wanted to make sure you knew about them.
Please feel free to contact us or call 415-221-2345 if you have questions.