Lawsuit on Substantial Increase in USCIS Filing Fees
Posted Sep 07, 2007
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The Services Employees International Union (SEIU), joined by Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregon’s union of farm workers, nursery, and reforestation workers, filed a lawsuit in federal court on August 28, 2007, against the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for "overstepping its role as a federal agency and raising fees well beyond basic processing costs." (As regular readers of MurthyDotCom and the MurthyBulletin will recall from our series of articles on this subject, the USCIS's dramatically increased filing fees went into effect on July 30, 2007.) SEIU represents more than 1.9 million members, and it is the fastest-growing union in North America. The lawsuit, SEIU v. Chertoff accuses the USCIS of "unlawfully charging citizenship and visa applicants for infrastructure upgrades, expensive subcontractors, and other agency blunders." The SEIU WebSite carries a Press Release on this lawsuit.
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This action dovetails with Congresswoman Zoë Lofgren's introduction of legislation in Congress to prevent the higher filing fees from going into effect, based on similar arguments. Both the introduction of the bill and the filing of the lawsuit indicate existing concern that the USCIS is reaching far beyond the costs of processing cases in an attempt to obtain funds for use in other, unrelated areas that should be borne by the DHS. Any victory in the federal lawsuit filed by SEIU together with PCUN potentially may benefit thousands of foreign nationals who are applying for immigration benefits with the USCIS. Any developments in this important case will be reported to MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers.
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