H.R. 8089 would change some of the fees that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) charges individuals and employers to expedite its processing of certain petitions and applications. Current law directs those fees to be deposited as offsetting collections into the Immigration Examinations Fee Account and spent by USCIS.
The act would increase the premium processing fees that are allowed under current law and would permit USCIS to charge new, specified premium processing fees for additional petitions. CBO believes that the new premium processing fees should be recorded in the budget as revenues, because they are new and an exercise of the government’s sovereign power over immigration matters. (Those additional revenues would be available for USCIS to spend.) The collection of those revenues would be offset by a decline in other revenues of approximately 22 percent to account for indirect tax effects.
CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 8089 also would have costs associated with the act's requirement that the Secretary of Homeland Security provide a five-year plan to the Congress; such spending would total less than $500,000 in fiscal year 2021 and would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.
