On June 23, the Department of Homeland Security published a notice of proposed rulemaking that would rewrite what it costs to become a U.S. citizen. For the roughly one million green card holders who file for naturalization in an average year, that cost has long been treated as an exception: federal policy has deliberately kept the fee below what USCIS says it actually spends processing each case, specifically to keep the path to citizenship open to working-class applicants. This proposal abandons that approach, treating naturalization as a service that should pay for itself rather than one worth subsidizing.
The public has until August 24 to submit formal comments through the government's official rulemaking portal before DHS can move toward finalizing the rule. As of August 19, the docket had already drawn more than 1,100 public comments.
What Would Change, Dollar by Dollar
Under the draft rule, the fee to file Form N-400 — the core naturalization application — would climb from $760 to $1,330 for paper filers, a 75% increase, and from $710 to $1,280 for online filers, an 80% increase. USCIS's current fee schedule confirms those are indeed today's baseline numbers.
Form N-336, which applicants use to appeal a denied naturalization case, would see a comparable jump: from $830 to $1,475 for paper filings (a 77.7% increase) and from $780 to $1,425 online (an 83% increase).
The steeper change sits underneath those sticker prices. Two entirely separate forms of relief disappear under the plan. First, DHS would scrap the $380 reduced fee currently available to households with income between 150% and 400% of the federal poverty guidelines. Second — and more consequential — it would end fee waivers altogether, the mechanism that currently lets applicants at or below 150% of the poverty line, or those facing extreme financial hardship, naturalize for nothing. Only current and former members of the U.S. armed forces filing under specific military-service provisions of federal immigration law would keep a fee exemption, because that protection is set by statute and outside DHS's authority to remove.
Nothing changes yet. Current pricing and both relief programs remain active while the rule is under review, a process DHS's own advocacy critics say will likely take several more months.
Why DHS Says the Math Doesn't Work
DHS frames the overhaul around what it calls a "beneficiary-pays" model — language drawn directly from the proposal itself — arguing that applicants who benefit from a service should cover its cost, rather than having that gap quietly filled by higher fees on green card, work-permit and other immigration filings. The agency's own cost analysis puts a number on that gap: it projects it currently collects roughly $636 million a year less than what naturalization applications actually cost to process, a shortfall of about 135%.
The added cost is "likely to deter qualified applicants from completing their path to citizenship," Boundless Immigration CEO Xiao Wang said of the proposal.
Advocacy groups counter that recovering that shortfall by eliminating waivers converts citizenship from a universal path into a benefit reserved for people who can already afford it — a philosophical reversal from a fee structure USCIS has maintained, in some form, for decades.
What It Means for a Family Naturalizing Together
The compounding effect is sharpest for mixed-status households where several relatives become eligible around the same time. Take three green card holders in one family filing online today: together, that's $2,130. Under the proposed online rate, the same trio would owe $3,840 — $1,710 more, money most working families don't have set aside.
For a household that currently qualifies for the $380 reduced fee, the shift is harder to pin to one number, because reduced-fee and fee-waiver applicants aren't currently permitted to file online at all — USCIS requires them to file on paper. Today, that family of three pays $1,140 on paper. Once the reduced fee disappears, along with the paper-only restriction tied to it, that same family could either file online at the new full rate ($3,840) or on paper ($3,990) — either way, an increase of roughly 235% to 250%. A family that currently pays nothing under the waiver faces the identical jump, from zero to as much as $3,990, with no relief option left to request.
Who Actually Uses These Programs
Fee relief isn't a marginal program. According to the New Americans Campaign, a coalition of citizenship-assistance organizations, more than half of the N-400 applications its partner groups currently help file include a full or partial waiver request. For the nonprofits and legal-aid offices that spend their days walking green card holders through the naturalization process, waivers aren't the exception to the rule — they're close to standard practice.
A Local Stake for Latino Communities
The change lands hardest in metro areas with large populations of green card holders working toward citizenship — Doral and Hialeah in South Florida, Houston, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles among them. In Miami-Dade, the county's Office of New Americans already connects legal permanent residents — including large Venezuelan, Cuban and Nicaraguan communities the office specifically serves — to citizenship workshops and free or reduced-cost legal help. Losing the federal waiver would push more applicants toward exactly that kind of community support, or price some out of applying at all. Advocates say the burden would fall hardest on households where a single wage earner is supporting several relatives pursuing citizenship at the same time.
What Happens Next
The comment window closes August 24, giving the public a matter of days to file formal objections through the federal rulemaking portal; DHS has explicitly stated that comments sent by email or letter directly to agency officials won't be entered into the formal record. Immigration attorneys are advising green card holders who currently qualify for a waiver or reduced fee to weigh filing before any final rule takes effect, since today's lower pricing structure remains valid throughout the review process. No effective date has been set, and DHS must still work through the comments it receives before it can publish a final version of the rule.
