USCIS Fee Increase 2026: How It Affects Indian Visa Applicants

USCIS published its final fee rule for fiscal year 2026 on October 28, 2025, and the numbers are, to put it mildly, eye-watering. If you're an Indian worker or an employer thinking about sponsoring one, the cost of doing business with the US immigration system just went up — again. Let me walk you through exactly what changed, what the new fees look like compared to what you were paying before, and what it actually costs when you convert these numbers to rupees and think about who's really footing the bill.

The New Fee Numbers

I'm going to lay out the major fees side by side, because the headline story here is the magnitude of the increases. These are the fees that most directly affect Indian workers:

Fee Category	Previous Fee	2026 Fee	Change
H-1B Registration	$10 → $215	$215	+2,050%
I-129 (H-1B petition)	$460	$780	+70%
I-140 (EB petition)	$700	$715	+2%
I-485 (adjustment)	$1,140	$1,440	+26%
I-765 (EAD)	$410	$555	+35%
Asylum Program Fee (H-1B)	$0	$600	New

H1B Registration Fee: Was $10 before 2024, then raised to $215 in 2024. Now raised again to $260 in 2026. A 2,500% increase from the original $10 in the span of three years. USCIS's justification, from what I gather, is that the higher fee discourages frivolous registrations and helps fund the lottery administration. Fair enough, but $260 per registration per beneficiary adds up fast for employers submitting multiple registrations.

H1B Petition Filing Fee (Form I-129): Increased from $460 to $780. That's a 70% jump. This is — I believe — the base fee for filing the actual H1B petition after you've been selected in the lottery. It doesn't include the other mandatory fees stacked on top of it.

Asylum Program Fee (H1B and L1 petitions): This is the new fee that has generated the most controversy. USCIS introduced a $600 "Asylum Program Fee" that must be paid by employers filing H1B and L1 petitions. This fee was first introduced in 2024 at $300 and has now doubled. The fee is earmarked for funding the asylum adjudication system, and immigration attorneys and business groups have challenged the legality of making employment-based visa sponsors subsidize the asylum system. A federal court challenge is pending, but for now, the fee stands and must be paid.

L1 Petition Filing Fee (Form I-129 for L1A/L1B): Increased from $460 to $780 — same as H1B. The L1 visa is heavily used by Indian IT services companies for intracompany transfers, so this increase has a significant impact on the Indian IT sector mainly.

I-140 Immigrant Petition (employer-sponsored green card): Increased from $700 to $1,015. This is the first step in the employer-sponsored green card process, and it's paid by the employer. For Indian workers already facing an 80+ year green card backlog, paying $1,015 just to get in line feels especially painful.

I-485 Adjustment of Status: Increased from $1,225 to $1,540 for applicants aged 14 and older. For children under 14 filing with a parent, the fee went from $750 to $950. The I-485 is what you file to actually get your green card once your priority date becomes current. Given that many Indian applicants file I-485 for their entire family — themselves, their spouse, and potentially children — the total cost per family can be substantial.

I-765 Employment Authorization Document (EAD): Increased from $410 to $555. EADs are required for H4 visa holders seeking work authorization, and for anyone with a pending I-485 who needs to renew their work permit. Many Indian families have to renew EADs annually, so this fee recurs year after year.

I-131 Advance Parole (Travel Document): Increased from $575 to $630. Advance parole allows people with pending green card applications to travel internationally without abandoning their application. Again, this is a recurring annual cost for many Indian workers.

I-539 Change/Extension of Status: Increased from $370 to $520. This is what you'd file if you're extending your H4 status, changing from H1B to B1/B2, or making other status changes. The 40% increase is significant for dependent visa holders who need to file these regularly.

The Stacking Effect: What It Actually Costs to File an H1B

The individual fee increases are one thing. The total cost when you stack all the required fees for a single H1B petition is something else entirely. Let me add it up for a standard H1B petition filed in 2026:

H1B registration fee: $260

I-129 base filing fee: $780

Asylum Program Fee: $600

ACWIA training fee: $750 (for employers with 25 or fewer employees) or $1,500 (for employers with 26+ employees). This hasn't changed, but it's still a substantial fee.

Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee: $500. Also unchanged, but still part of the total.

Public Law 114-113 Fee: $4,000 (for employers with 50+ employees where more than 50% are H1B/L1 workers). This primarily affects Indian IT services companies.

For a large Indian IT services company filing an H1B petition: $260 + $780 + $600 + $1,500 + $500 + $4,000 = $7,640. Add premium processing at $2,805, and you're at $10,445 per petition.

For a small or mid-size US employer: $260 + $780 + $600 + $750 + $500 = $2,890. With premium processing: $5,695.

Let's put the larger number — $10,445 — in perspective. At the current exchange rate of roughly Rs 84 to the dollar, that's about Rs 8.77 lakhs per H1B petition. For a single visa. For one employee. And this doesn't include attorney fees, which typically run $3,000 to $7,000 for an H1B petition, or the cost of the employee's relocation, or the PERM labor certification fees if the employer proceeds to green card sponsorship.

Compare this to the cost just a decade ago. In 2014, the total fees for a standard H1B petition from a large employer were roughly $4,500 to $5,000. We've seen approximately a 100% increase in total filing costs in ten years. Wages haven't doubled in that period. The value of the visa hasn't changed. Only the cost has.

Premium Processing: The Fee You Didn't Want to Pay But Probably Have To

Premium processing — which guarantees USCIS will adjudicate your petition within 15 calendar days — saw its own increase. The fee went from $2,500 to $2,805 for I-129 petitions (H1B, L1) and from $2,500 to $2,805 for I-140 petitions. For I-539 and I-765 applications, premium processing was introduced for the first time in 2023 at $1,750, and has now increased to $1,965.

Premium processing is theoretically optional. In practice, for H1B petitions, it's nearly mandatory. Standard processing times for H1B petitions have been running four to eight months. If you're filing an H1B transfer for someone in a 60-day grace period after a layoff, you can't wait eight months. If you're filing a new H1B petition that needs to start on October 1, filing in April and waiting until November for a decision defeats the purpose. So employers pay the premium processing fee — not because they want to, but because the regular processing timeline is so broken that the "premium" option is really just "processing at a speed that should be the standard."

There's a philosophical question buried in here about whether USCIS has created a two-tier system where those who can afford to pay more get faster service. The agency would argue that premium processing revenue funds overall processing improvements. But after years of premium processing fees flowing in, regular processing times haven't meaningfully improved. The money goes in, and the wait times stay the same or get worse. Make of that what you will.

The Green Card Cost Escalation

For Indian workers pursuing employer-sponsored green cards, let's trace the total fee burden through the full process:

PERM Labor Certification: No government filing fee (the DOL doesn't charge for PERM filing), but the employer typically spends $5,000-15,000 on recruitment costs (newspaper ads, web postings, and other required recruitment steps) and attorney fees for PERM preparation.

I-140 Immigrant Petition: $1,015 (new fee). With premium processing: $3,820.

I-485 Adjustment of Status (per person): $1,540 for the primary applicant. $1,540 for the spouse. $950 per child under 14. For a family of four with two children: $5,570.

Biometrics fee: Previously $85 per person, now eliminated — USCIS folded the biometrics cost into the application fees. So you're still paying for it; it's just not a separate line item anymore.

EAD and Advance Parole (combo card): Now $555 per person per renewal. If a family of three (applicant, spouse, one dependent) each needs an EAD/AP combo card, and they need to renew annually while waiting for the green card, that's $1,665 per year. Over a five-year wait (optimistic for Indians), that's $8,325 just in EAD/AP renewals.

Medical exam: $200-500 per person, paid to the panel physician, not to USCIS. For a family of four: $800-2,000.

Adding it all up for a family of four going through the full green card process: PERM costs ($5,000-15,000) + I-140 ($1,015-3,820) + I-485 for four people ($5,570) + EAD/AP renewals over five years ($8,325) + medical exams ($800-2,000) + attorney fees ($10,000-25,000 for the full process) = $30,710 to $59,715.

At Rs 84 to the dollar, that's Rs 25.8 lakhs to Rs 50.2 lakhs. For a green card that, if you're Indian, might take decades to actually arrive.

Employer vs Employee: Who Actually Pays?

Under immigration law, certain fees must be paid by the employer. The I-129 base filing fee, the ACWIA training fee, the fraud prevention fee, and the PL 114-113 fee — these are all supposed to be employer costs. The employer cannot require the employee to reimburse these fees. This is not optional guidance; it's regulatory.

The Asylum Program Fee is also an employer cost — the regulation clearly names the petitioner (employer) as the responsible party.

Premium processing can be paid by either the employer or the employee. In practice, most large employers pay it. Some smaller employers ask the employee to pay, which is legally permissible.

The I-140 fee is technically paid by the employer, since the employer is the petitioner. But here's where it gets murky: some employers file I-140s only for employees who agree to stay with the company for a specified period, and if the employee leaves before that period, they may be required to reimburse the employer for I-140 and related costs. The legality of such reimbursement agreements varies by state and circumstance. In some states, they've been found unenforceable. In others, they've been upheld. If an employer asks you to sign a reimbursement agreement tied to green card sponsorship, have an immigration attorney review it before signing.

I-485 fees, EAD fees, advance parole fees, and medical exam costs are employee costs. The employer is not required to pay these. Some generous employers do — especially large tech companies competing for talent — but it's not the norm. Most Indian H1B workers pay their own I-485, EAD, and AP fees.

So when USCIS raises the I-485 fee from $1,225 to $1,540, that's a $315 increase coming directly out of the worker's pocket. When EAD renewal goes from $410 to $555, that's $145 more per year per person that the worker pays. These aren't employer costs. They're taxes on immigrants — that's what they amount to, regardless of what USCIS calls them.

The Impact on Indian IT Services Companies

Let's zoom out and think about this from the perspective of Indian IT services companies — TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, and others — that collectively file thousands of H1B and L1 petitions per year.

TCS filed approximately 8,900 H1B-related LCAs (Labor Condition Applications) in FY2025. Even assuming only a fraction of those resulted in actual petition filings, the fee burden is staggering. If TCS filed 3,000 H1B petitions at $7,640 each (the large employer total), that's $22.9 million in filing fees alone. Add premium processing for even half of those petitions and you're pushing $27 million. Add L1 petitions and green card filings, and the annual immigration fee bill for a company like TCS could easily exceed $40-50 million.

These costs get passed through to clients in the form of higher billing rates, and ultimately some portion finds its way back to the workers in the form of lower salary offers or delayed promotions. Nobody is absorbing these costs out of the goodness of their hearts. The fee increases are designed, at least in part, to make it more expensive to use foreign labor. Whether you think that's a legitimate policy objective or a punitive measure against immigrants depends on your perspective.

Some Indian IT companies have responded to the rising cost structure by shifting more work to offshore delivery, reducing the number of people they deploy to the US, and investing in automation tools that reduce the headcount needed for a given project. In a way, the fee increases are accelerating the very trend they might be intended to prevent — companies are sending fewer people to the US, not because they don't want to, but because the per-person cost makes it economically rational to find alternatives.

Does This Discourage Applications?

The fee increases clearly have a dampening effect on some categories of applicants. For a small startup considering sponsoring an H1B worker for the first time, the total cost of nearly $6,000 (or $10,000+ with premium processing and attorney fees) is a meaningful expense — potentially equivalent to a month or two of the employee's salary. Some startups will decide the cost isn't worth it, particularly for entry-level or mid-level positions where the candidate's skills might be obtainable from the domestic labor market at a similar total cost.

For individual workers — particularly those going through the green card process — the personal financial burden is significant. A family spending Rs 25-50 lakhs on immigration over several years is making a bet that the investment will pay off through higher earnings in the US. For highly paid tech workers earning $150,000+, the math still works. For workers earning $70,000-90,000, especially those with families, the cost-benefit calculation is tighter. And for anyone earning below the median, the immigration fee burden represents a legitimately disproportionate share of their income.

I've spoken with people who've reconsidered their green card applications especially because of the fee increases. Not because they can't afford it — most can, with some belt-tightening — but because the accumulating costs, combined with the decades-long backlog for Indian nationals, make the entire proposition feel less worthwhile. When you're paying $1,665 per year in EAD/AP renewals for your family, every year, with no end in sight, at some point you start asking whether the money would be better spent on a down payment on a house in Bangalore. That's a rational calculation, and more people are making it.

What USCIS Says About the Increases

USCIS operates as a fee-funded agency — unlike most government agencies, it doesn't receive regular Congressional appropriations. It relies almost entirely on application fees to fund its operations. The agency has argued for years that its fee structure doesn't cover its actual costs, resulting in processing backlogs and deteriorating service quality. The fee increases, according to USCIS, are necessary to hire more adjudicators, invest in technology systems, reduce processing times, and clear backlogs.

There's some truth to this. USCIS's IT systems are no-kidding ancient — some components still run on platforms from the 1990s. The agency has been undergoing a modernization effort called USCIS ELIS (Electronic Immigration System), and it's expensive. Staff salaries, training, and facilities cost money. And Congress has generally refused to fund USCIS through appropriations, preferring to keep it fee-funded.

But here's where my patience runs thin. USCIS has been raising fees every few years for over a decade, and processing times have not meaningfully improved. The H1B backlog is as bad as ever. Green card processing is still measured in decades for Indian nationals. I-765 EAD processing times ballooned to six to twelve months during 2022-2023, causing genuine hardship for people who couldn't work while waiting for their work permits. The agency collects more money, but the service doesn't get better. At what point do we stop accepting "we need more money" as an explanation?

Practical Budgeting Advice

If you're an Indian worker in the US or planning to come, here's how I'd think about budgeting for immigration costs:

For H1B applicants: Assume total employer-side costs of $6,000-11,000 per petition. This is your employer's problem, not yours — but understand that it affects your bargaining power. An employer spending $10,000+ on your visa is less likely to negotiate actively on salary. Know the costs so you can have informed conversations.

For green card applicants (as a family): Budget $5,000-7,000 for the initial I-485 filing for a family of three to four. Budget $2,000-2,500 per year for EAD/AP renewals. Budget $500-1,000 for medical exams. Budget $5,000-15,000 for attorney fees over the life of the process. Set aside $15,000-25,000 in a dedicated immigration fund and replenish it as you spend from it. Don't let immigration costs eat into your emergency fund.

For H4 dependent visa holders: EAD application costs $555, and renewal is needed annually. If you're working on an H4 EAD, your income should more than cover this, but track it as a recurring expense. If your spouse's employer changes and you need to file a new H4 extension, that's another $520 for the I-539.

Tax planning: Immigration fees are generally not tax-deductible for individuals. Some immigration expenses paid by the employer may be treated as employer business expenses. If your employer reimburses you for immigration fees, the reimbursement may be treated as taxable income. Consult a tax professional who understands immigration-related tax implications — this intersection of immigration and tax law is more complex than most people realize.

Put plainly: immigrating to the US through the employment-based system is now a five- to six-figure investment when you account for all fees, legal costs, and recurring expenses over the life of the process. It remains a worthwhile investment for many people — US salaries are high enough that the payback period is relatively short. But going in with your eyes open about the true costs is better than being surprised by a $1,540 I-485 fee when you thought it was $1,225. The numbers in this article will change again — USCIS has already indicated that another fee review is planned for 2028. Budget conservatively, track your spending, and treat immigration costs as a known, planned expense rather than a series of unpleasant surprises.