PRESS RELEASES 2007

U.S. State Department to Increase Visa Fees January 1

Effective January 1, 2008, the application fee for a U.S. nonimmigrant visa will increase from US$100 to US$131. The increase will allow the U.S. Department of State to recover increasing costs of security and other enhancements to the nonimmigrant visa application process. The last visa fee increase occurred in 2002.

Jamaican applicants who paid the prior $100 application fee before January 1 will be processed only if they are scheduled and appear for a visa interview before January 31. Applicants who paid the prior $100 application fee and appear for visa interviews after January 31, 2008, will have to pay the additional $31 before their interview.

The U.S. Department of State is required by law to recover the cost of processing nonimmigrant visas through the collection of the Machine-Readable Visa application fee. Because of new security-related costs, new information technology systems, and inflation, the current $100 fee does not cover the actual cost of processing a nonimmigrant visa. A cost-of-service study found that the $100 fee has not covered the entire cost of processing nonimmigrant visas since 2004 and that the State Department has been absorbing the additional cost since then.

As an example of increased costs, the Consular Section at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston now collects ten fingerprints from each applicant which are sent to the FBI for analysis. The State Department is now being charged by the FBI for fingerprint checks.

The fee for immigrant visas will also increase by US$20 to $355 beginning January 1.