The Immigration Examinations Fee Account (IEFA) is an account in the Treasury of the United States into which all revenues collected from fees for immigration and naturalization are deposited, and that is used to fund the costs associated with providing the immigration and naturalization benefits.[1] [2] The account funds most of the operations of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that is tasked with most of the associated work (such as adjudication of USCIS immigration forms).[3] [4]
While most USCIS fees for immigration and naturalization benefits are set by USCIS, some fees are explicitly set through legislation. The three main legislatively set fees are:[3]
The concept of the Immigration Examinations Fee Account, and the authority of USCIS to set a fee schedule to make sure that the fees cover the costs of providing the associated services, and are consistent with other aspects of United States federal law and regulations around fee-setting; some of these other laws and used to inform the USCIS' process of setting and updating fees:[1] [3]
The Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriation Act, 1989, Pub. L. No. 100-459, Sec. 209, 102 Stat. 2186, 2203 (1988) authorized the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to prescribe and collect fees to recover the cost of providing certain immigration and naturalization benefits. That law also authorized the establishment of the IEFA in the Treasury of the United States. All revenue from fees collected for immigration and naturalization benefits are deposited in the IEFA and remain available to provide immigration and naturalization benefits and the collection, safeguarding and accounting for fees.[1] INS no longer exists, and its functions are split between the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The immigration and naturalization benefits described in the Act were at the time handled by the Adjudication & Naturalizations Program (ANP) of INS; USCIS is the successor organization for this program.
A later legislation, the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1991, Pub. L. No. 101-515, Sec. 210(d), 104 Stat. 2101, 2121 (1990), allowed for the fees to be set at a level to ensure recovery of all costs, not just the costs of processing the petition or application, but also costs of processing other petitions that may have no fee (such as asylum petitions) as well as administrative costs.[1]
Another provision requires the Attorney General to prepare and submit annually to Congress statements of financial condition of the IEFA, including beginning account balance, revenues, withdrawals, and ending account balance and projections for the ensuing fiscal year.[2]
IEFA fee reviews conducted biennially by USCIS have sometimes led to identification of various kinds of indirect costs that were not accounted for in previous fees, as well as cost increases due to increases in the cost of living, and these has been used as a basis for either fee increases or the charging of additional fees.[1] [3]