Fee Increases for US Passports, Visa Pages, and Consular Reports of Birth Abroad

There are United States Embassies and Consulates posted all over the world. These Posts are dedicated to providing services to Americans resident or traveling through the host country. At the same time, these Posts are also tasked with maintaining relations with the host country's government.

As the American expatriate population continues to grow, the need for Consular Services is rising. Further, the cost of providing Americans overseas with certain Consular services is also on the rise. This has led to the United States Department of State, the department with jurisdiction over US Embassies and Consulates abroad, to propose a new rule which would change the fees for certain services. Recently, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) promulgated a copy of the proposed rule and the relevant sections have been quoted below.

For a summation of the intentions behind the recently proposed rule, it may be wise to quote the provisions of the proposal itself:

"This rule proposes adjustments in current fees for consular services. The Department of State is adjusting the fees in light of an independent cost of service study's (``CoSS'') findings that the U.S. Government is not fully covering its costs for providing these services under the current fee structure. The primary objective of the adjustments to the Schedule of Fees is to ensure that fees for consular services reflect costs to the United States of providing the services."

Of critical importance to those residing overseas are the costs associated with obtaining a new US Passport, to further quote the proposed rule:

"The Department is increasing the application fee for a passport book for an adult (age 17 and older) from $55 to $70. The application fee for a passport book for a minor (age 16 and younger) will remain at $40...The Department is increasing the passport book security surcharge from $20 to $40 in order to cover the costs of increased border security which includes, but is not limited to, enhanced biometric features in the document itself. The passport book security surcharge is the same for adult passport books and for minor passport books."

Of significance to many Americans abroad is that of adding visa pages. As an American travels their visa stamp pages begin to fill up an eventually new pages are required. In the past, these pages were provided to American Citizens as a courtesy. The proposed rule would initiate a fee for adding these pages:

"In the past, the Department provided extra pages in a customer's passport, to which foreign countries' visas may then be affixed, at no charge. The CoSS found that the cost of the pages themselves, of having the pages placed in the book in a secure manner by trained personnel, and of completing the required security checks results in a cost to the U.S. Government of $82.48 based on a projected FY10 workload of 218,000. Therefore, the Department will charge $82 for this service."

Consular Reports of Birth Abroad are documents which note that a child born abroad is a US Citizen. Each year, many US Citizens report the birth of American children overseas, the task of compiling the relevant data on the newborn and issuing a report of birth abroad is labor intensive and the recently proposed rules would deal with this issue:

"The CoSS found that the cost of accepting and processing an application for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States is $197.28 based on an FY10 workload projection of 80,000 applications. The Department has decided to raise the fee from $65 to $100, still significantly less than cost, based on its view that too high a fee might deter U.S. citizen parents from properly documenting the citizenship of their children at birth, a development the Department feels would be detrimental to national interests."

As more Americans take up residence overseas the responsibilities of US Embassies and Consulates will likely increase. One can hope that the fee increases proposed above will culminate in the continuation of high quality Consular Services.

The quotations noted above can be found on the following url: http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?docid=31263