U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will raise several immigration-related fees for filings postmarked on or after October 16, 2026, under an annual inflation adjustment mandated by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1), according to a Federal Register notice.
The changes affect asylum applications, employment authorization, immigration parole, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) filings. USCIS calculated the adjustments using the change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers between July 2025 and July 2026 (a 3.36% increase), with statutory rounding rules.
Under the new schedule, the annual pending asylum application fee rises from $102 to $105. Initial employment authorization fees for asylum applicants, parolees, and TPS beneficiaries increase from $560 to $570. The immigration parole fee rises from $1,020 to $1,050, and the TPS application fee from $510 to $520. USCIS warned that filings postmarked on or after October 16 without the correct fee will be rejected.
The fee hikes come as the agency slows naturalization. A National Foundation for American Policy analysis found naturalization approvals fell by 78% between January 2025 and July 2026, while the denial rate climbed from 8.4% to 20.1%. More than 742,000 naturalization applications were pending at the end of June 2026, and monthly approvals dropped from roughly 70,000 in 2024–25 to about 16,514 in July 2026. DHS framed the falling numbers as an administration victory, citing “net negative migration for the first time in half a century.”
