Summary: One of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) primary functions is to provide services or benefits that facilitate entry, residence, employment, and naturalization of legal immigrants. To recover the costs that it incurs in providing benefits, INS is authorized to charge fees to recipients of INS services. Federal agencies, including INS, are generally required by Department of the Treasury regulations to deposit fees totaling $5,000 or more on the same day or the day after they are collected. This report discusses: (1) the extent to which INS made timely deposits of fees collected from aliens who applied for benefits; and (2) the potential costs to the government if INS deposits were not timely. Because INS data were incomplete, GAO was unable to fully determine the extent to which INS complied with Treasury regulations requiring deposit on the same or next day after collection. However, in fiscal year 1999, INS service centers generally did not make timely fee deposits. According to GAO's conservative estimate, the resulting interest cost to the government, or the cost of interest incurred on debt or other obligations, was about $640,000 in fiscal year 1999.
