Help Immigrants Stay in New York

For clients of The Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Law Unit, the cost to file immigration applications can be a heavy burden with fees averaging around $750 per person. This is an unbelievable ask for anyone, but especially for marginalized immigrants who struggle with covering day-to-day expenses for their families. Your donation will have a direct impact, helping to keep immigrant New Yorkers at home with their families.

Throughout this campaign, we will provide updates on our progress. Our goal of $25,000 will allow us to serve up to 35 New Yorkers - people like Afua. 

Afua L. came to the US on a tourist visa 2002, but for various reasons stayed here, without returning to her native Ghana. In 2007, she fell in love with a US citizen, with whom she eventually had two children.  She and her husband came to Legal Aid for help last year with a family-based petition for her to get a green card. Although our services are free, the low-income couple could not afford the filing fees charged by US Citizenship and Immigration Services: $1,760, plus an additional $200 for a medical examination. After Legal Aid paid these fees for her, she successfully completed the immigration process in July 2018, obtaining her green card and at last securing her status.

About U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Filing Fees

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) charges filing fees for most applications. These fees can be high, and most cannot be waived: $1,760 to seek a green card through a family member, $725 for citizenship, $540 to renew a green card, $410 to renew a work permit, and $930 for a victim of a violent crime to seek relief (technically called a ‘waiver of grounds of inadmissibility’). 

For the few applications for which fees can be waived, USCIS has begun indiscriminately rejecting fee waiver requests. The federal government also appears to be on the verge of publishing new rules that would make receipt of means-tested public benefits (one of the traditional bases for seeking a fee waiver) much riskier than before.  For these reasons, Legal Aid has been helping our immigrant clients, who are all low-income, with the payment of these fees. But we need your help.