In short, it’s a weighted average increase of 65 per cent per applicant per visa, and the same again for adjustment of status.

On the other hand, it’s not quite as bad as I first thought: the I-485 increase from $385 to $905 seemed atrocious, but that encompasses the various ancillary fees for interim benefits such as advance parole and employment authorisation, which are part of the nickel-and-diming I mentioned. It’s a smart move. So is the move to enhance waivers for domestic violence adjustments and eliminate fees for asylum and trafficking visas.

Still, that’s an increase of over $100 on the average total cost for adjustment of status, and apparently doesn’t include the (increased) charges for biometrics.

Take the fee increases for the I-129F, the very first petition that needs to be sent to bring over a fiancé. In September, the fee was $170. This fee has gone up incrementally for about the past 20 years, in jumps of around $20. In October, this is going up to $455, more than the double all of previous increases combined. That’s the single largest jump in this whole package.

Paying fees is fine. But this is a ridiculous amount of money for a projected 20% increase in processing time.

Going back to the principle, it sort of ties into the ‘graduate tax’ as an alternative to tuition fees. It’s a difficult thing to square constitutionally, I’d imagine. Ultimately, Americans who want a better immigration system need to foot the bill, fully, and set the terms. If that means the Know-Nothing faction locks out foreigners, then so be it.

(We will ignore any tax avoidance/evasion Rupert Murdoch is pursuing – presumably he could avoid/evade an immmigrant tax as well).

So why should you guys pay yet another tax on top of that? What costs do you think you are imposing on the USA?

You have some argument here that you derive great benefit from living in the USA. But benefit alone is not justification for price. I derived great benefit from $50 of antibiotics – they very likely saved my life – according to your logic I should have been charged for them in proportion to the benefit to me, not in proportion to the cost to make and deliver them to me. If not, why should you be charged more for citizenship of the USA than the costs to the country of you arriving?

On the Murdoch example, I suspect he got in on the E1 ‘trader’ visa anyway, which would be a de facto tax if one didn’t have the same clever accountants as the Digger.

But on the principle, the LouDobbses ought to be supporting the idea of paying for a better, less fucked-up legal immigration bureaucracy out of their own taxes.

The bi-annual ‘immigration’ foo-fah would be amusing if it weren’t such a pain. After all, the people who know most about the USCIS from the sharp end are those who can’t vote, and those who do vote tend to think of the debate strictly in terms of those durned Mexicans.

I emailed Lou Dobbs at the end of last year with a challenge: after the elections, to devote programming space to an examination of the underfunded immigration bureaucracy, and to call for an increase of funding. (I know, I know.)

The worst aspect of USCIS charges are the nickel-and-dime ones. Been fingerprinted for one form? Doesn’t matter: there’s still a mandatory fingerprinting fee (and often a long trip to the facility) for another one.

By comparison, the process for an American spouse to get a settlement visa for the UK is refreshingly straightforward: one $520 fee and a turnaround in days rather than months.

I am unaware of any large collection of complaints about how long it takes to get citizenship.

I believe it depends a great deal upon where you are in the US. Christopher Hitchens isn’t a representative case, but he applied in 2002/3 and may have just taken the oath in recent months.

Right, so for the US especially, since much of what has made it more advantageous than other Western countries has been based on immigration, shouldn’t that tax be more levied on native-born citizens? It makes sense, when one considers the tax as an advertising outlay that will benefit one’s children more than it wil onself.

engels, you’ve got the proposal wrong, and its because my presentation was confusing. The actual proposal ignores the principle of charging people differentially depending on the benefit they get, and simply targets ability to pay. So I envisaged levying the tax on everyone whose taxable income is above $50K and doubling it for their taxable income above $100K. (Those numbers are plucked out of thin air), regardless of where they came from and what, therefore, its reasonable to assume that they’ve gained.

I think the original post is confusing and, possibly (but not necessarily) confused. There are two considerations (ability to pay, extent of benefit) and in principle its reasonable to consider both of them. In practice considering the first is easy, and considering the second is difficult and perhaps its obnoxious. The reason I thought you were ok with the policy is because it in fact takes only the first into account, which you seem ok with.