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INS User Fee Revisions: INS Complied With Guidance but Could Make Improvements

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Report Type Reports and Testimonies
Report Date Sept. 28, 1998
Report No. GGD-98-197
Subject
Summary:

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is authorized to charge user fees to recipients of certain INS services (e.g., processing an alien's application for naturalization). These fees are to recover the agency's costs to provide the services. On the basis of a 1997 study, INS proposed increasing the fees that it charges users for many of its services. Some of these fees would more than double under a final INS rule issued in August 1998. INS collected and deposited about $624 million in application fees into the Immigration Examinations Fee Account in fiscal year 1997. This report examines (1) the extent to which INS' methodology for computing the proposed application fees complied with federal user fee requirements and used generally accepted statistical sampling procedures and (2) whether INS recognized implemented and proposed changes to the naturalization process in its application fees.

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