EDITORIAL: The High Cost of Immigrating

New York Times: When it comes to America’s immigration bureaucracy, there is one thing that newcomers to the United States can count on: the fees have a way of going up. The Obama administration has announced plans to increase fees for immigration documents by about 10 percent. The director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Alejandro Mayorkas, says he needs to close a $200 million budget gap for the coming fiscal year. Because his agency is required by Congress to be almost entirely self-financed, the burden of raising the cash will be placed where it always is: on immigrant applicants. Under the proposal, they would have to pay $985 to apply for a green card, up from $930. The application for employment authorization would rise to $380 from $340. A separate fee for collecting fingerprints and other biometric data would increase to $85 from $80.