Immigration Filing Fees: Every Dollar, Line by Line
There is no such thing as "the visa fee." An employment case is a stack of separate government charges, and which ones apply depends on the category, the size of the employer, and the kind of petition being filed. Miss one, or send the wrong amount for one, and USCIS rejects the whole filing unopened — it is not a denial on the merits, but the case has not started, and the filing date is lost. This guide is the current map: what each charge is, what it costs, and who has to pay it.
Start with where the numbers come from. Every amount below is taken from the USCIS fee schedule, Form G-1055, and USCIS also runs an online fee calculator that works through a filing form by form. The figures here are the paper-filing amounts; several of the main forms cost $50 less when they are filed online instead. Treat any printed list — including this one — as a starting point, not the final word: fees change, and the amount that matters is the amount in force on the day the filing goes out. Once a filing is accepted, its fees are generally nonrefundable, whatever the outcome.
One fee appears almost everywhere, so it is worth meeting first. The Asylum Program Fee is charged on every Form I-129 work petition and every Form I-140 immigrant petition: $600 for a regular petitioner, $300 for a small employer with twenty-five or fewer full-time-equivalent employees, and nothing — $0 — for a nonprofit. An individual filing an I-140 for himself or herself, as in an EB-1A or National Interest Waiver case, pays the $300 rate. Despite its name, the fee has nothing to do with the worker or the job; it is simply a charge USCIS adds to employer petitions, and it is paid on top of the form's own fee, as a separate payment.
Now the H-1B, line by line. A cap-subject case starts before any petition exists, with electronic registration at $215 per beneficiary. The petition itself, Form I-129, costs $780, or $460 for small employers and nonprofits. Add the Asylum Program Fee from the paragraph above. Add the training fee under the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act — the ACWIA fee — at $1,500, or $750 for an employer with twenty-five or fewer full-time-equivalent employees; it is due on an initial petition, on a change of employer, and on the first extension for the same employer, and institutions of higher education, their related nonprofits, and nonprofit and government research organizations are exempt from it altogether. Add the $500 Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee on an initial petition or a change of employer — it is not charged on an extension with the same employer. A standard new H-1B petition from a larger employer therefore carries $3,380 in government fees, $3,595 counting the registration; the same petition from a small employer carries $2,010, or $2,225 with registration.
One H-1B charge hits only a narrow slice of employers, but it is a large one. An employer with fifty or more employees in the United States, more than half of them in H-1B or L status, pays an additional fee under Public Law 114-113: $4,000 on an H-1B petition. That fee is still in force — it applies to covered petitions filed on or before September 30, 2027 — and it now reaches extension petitions as well as new petitions and changes of employer. Most employers will never owe it. An employer anywhere near that fifty-employee, majority-H-1B-or-L profile should have the question answered before the petition is prepared, not after.
One more cost must be checked before you budget a hire who is outside the United States: a presidential proclamation added a $100,000 payment to certain new H-1B petitions for workers abroad, its collection has been challenged in court, and whether it is being collected for your filing has to be confirmed at the time you file — do not build an offer on the assumption that it is either there or gone.
The L-1 transfer petition uses the same Form I-129, at the L rate: $1,385, or $695 for small employers and nonprofits. The Asylum Program Fee applies on the same terms as above. The $500 Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee applies to an initial L petition and to a change of employer. The Public Law 114-113 fee applies to covered employers here too, at $4,500 for an L petition, on the same fifty-employee, majority-H-1B-or-L trigger and on the same schedule — in force for covered petitions filed on or before September 30, 2027, extensions included. A standard initial L-1 petition from a larger employer that is not a covered employer totals $2,485. Where the company files under an approved blanket L petition instead, Form I-129S for the individual worker carries no filing fee of its own, but the $500 fraud fee is still collected for the beneficiary, and the Public Law fee can apply as well.
The other work categories run on Form I-129 too, each at its own rate, each plus the Asylum Program Fee. An O petition for a person of extraordinary ability or achievement costs $1,055, or $530 for small employers and nonprofits. A petition in the E, TN, H-3, P, Q, or R classifications costs $1,015, or $510 for small employers and nonprofits. Optional premium processing, requested on Form I-907, is $2,965 for the I-129 and I-140 classifications covered in this guide; it buys a faster decision, not a better one, and it is never part of the required total unless speed is worth paying for.
The green card stages price differently. The Department of Labor charges no fee at all for a prevailing wage request or for the PERM labor certification that begins most EB-2 and EB-3 cases — but "no government fee" does not mean "no cost," because the law puts every PERM cost, the recruitment advertising and the legal work included, on the employer; the worker may not pay them or reimburse them, directly or through a pay cut. The immigrant petition that follows, Form I-140, costs $715, plus the Asylum Program Fee: $1,315 in total for a regular employer, $1,015 for a self-petitioner, and $715 for a nonprofit. The final application, Form I-485 to adjust status, costs $1,440 for an applicant aged fourteen or over — a child under fourteen filing with a parent pays $950 — and two things that used to ride along with it are now charged separately: a work permit application at $260 while the I-485 is pending, and a travel document application at $630. No rule assigns the I-485 fee to the employer; in practice it is paid by the worker or shared by agreement. A spouse or child in the United States who needs to extend or change status to match the worker files Form I-539, at $470 on paper or $420 online.
Who pays is not always a matter of choice, and this is the part employers most often get wrong. The ACWIA training fee and the $500 fraud fee are the employer's by law in an H-1B case: the employer may not pass either one to the worker, and may not recover it by reducing the worker's pay. The same employer-only rule covers the L-1 fraud fee, which the petitioner pays. Every PERM cost is the employer's by law, as explained above. The remaining petition fees are the petitioner's charges as the filer — budget them as the cost of sponsoring, and do not build a sponsorship on the worker quietly covering the petition that only the employer can file.
Finally, how the money is actually sent. USCIS does not take cash. Online filings are paid through the government's online payment system. Paper filings are now paid electronically as well: by card, using Form G-1450, or by direct debit from a U.S. bank account, using Form G-1650 — paper checks and money orders are no longer accepted for most filings, apart from a narrow exemption process. A card must be issued by a U.S. bank, the card networks accepted are Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover, and there is a per-card daily transaction limit of $24,999.99, so the card's credit limit has to cover the full amount being charged to it. This is not a detail to be casual about: if the card is declined, USCIS does not try it a second time — the filing is rejected, and the case goes back to the start.
So budget a case the way USCIS will bill it: registration first where the cap applies, then the petition fee at the rate for your category and your size, then the Asylum Program Fee, then the category's own add-ons — training and fraud fees for H-1B, the fraud fee for L-1, the Public Law fee if your workforce profile triggers it — then premium processing only if you choose it, and the green card stages after that. Add the lines that apply to your filing, confirm every one of them against the fee schedule on the day you file, and the government's bill will hold no surprises.
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General information, not legal advice. Requirements and processing change; we confirm current rules for your case.