DUSHANBE, December 19, Asia-Plus  -- Effective January 1, 2008, the application fee for a U.S. nonimmigrant visa will increase from $100 to $131, press release issued by the US Embassy in Dushanbe said.  This increase allows the Department of State to recover the costs of security and other enhancements to the non-immigrant visa application process. 

Applicants who paid the prior $100 application fee before January 1 will be processed only if they are scheduled and appear for a visa interview before January 31.  Applicants who paid the prior $100 application fee and appear for visa interviews after January 31, 2008 must pay the difference -- $31 -- before they will be interviewed.

The Department is required by law to recover the cost of processing non-immigrant visas through the collection of the Machine-Readable Visa application fee. Because of new security-related costs, new information technology systems, and inflation, the $100 Machine-Readable Visa fee is lower than the actual cost of processing non-immigrant visas.  In fact, the $100 fee was already lower than the cost of processing non-immigrant visas when the fee was reviewed as a part of the cost of service study in 2004.  The Department of State has been absorbing the additional cost.  We are now collecting 10 fingerprints from each applicant, and the cost charged by the FBI to review those fingerprints no longer allows us to do this.  The application fee has increased twice since September 11, 2001, the last time in 2002.