REPORT: 75% USCIS Fee Hike — America Shuts the Door on Low-Income Immigrants

The figure that says it all

On June 22, 2026, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published in the Federal Register a notice of proposed rulemaking — identified under reference RIN 1615-AD08 — that would raise the cost of applying for American citizenship from $760 to $1,330, a hike of 75%. This is not a calculation error. It is a policy. A policy that directly affects legal permanent residents — green card holders — who have completed every required step, waited the requisite years, passed the civic and language tests, and now find themselves facing an unprecedented financial barrier in the recent history of American legal immigration.

The proposal, still subject to a 60-day public comment period — through August 24, 2026 — does not take effect immediately. But it signals a deep ideological break with the decades of federal policy that saw naturalization as a public good to be encouraged, not monetized. The DHS now endorses a model called "full-cost, beneficiary-pays": the immigrant pays the real, full cost of processing. The American state no longer subsidizes the path to citizenship.

What the bureaucratic calculation conceals

Form N-400, the naturalization application par excellence, is not just a form. It represents years of legal life on American territory, payment of taxes, community participation, language acquisition, and passage of civic exams. For hundreds of thousands of low-income immigrants, this form was within reach thanks to two mechanisms: a full fee waiver for cases of financial precarity, and a reduced rate of $380 for households whose income did not exceed 400% of the federal poverty threshold. Both are eliminated in the current proposal.

For modest-income households, the impact is brutal. Those who benefited from the reduced rate of $380 now face a bill of $1,330 — an increase of 250%, according to data compiled by the specialized immigration law firm Fragomen. No official press release framed it that way. That figure, however, is in the tables of the proposed regulation. And it speaks for itself.

I am not naive enough to believe that every immigration policy should be free. Real costs exist. But when an administration proposes a 250% hike on the rate designed for the most vulnerable, while maintaining exemptions only for military personnel, we are no longer talking about budget management. We are talking about political signaling. And I read that signal clearly.

A safety net torn away

Fee waivers were not a generosity. They were the result of decades of public policy founded on a simple observation: naturalization benefits society as much as the individual. A civically integrated citizen pays higher taxes, votes, participates in civic life, and invests in their community. Successive administrations, Republican and Democrat, had maintained access mechanisms for low-income immigrants. The Biden government, in its 2024 rule, had codified and expanded those criteria. The DHS proposal under the Trump administration reverses that achievement head-on.

Currently, an immigrant can obtain a full waiver by proving one of three conditions: insufficient income, receipt of public benefits, or documented financial hardship. Under the proposed regime, none of these three doors would remain open for Forms N-400 and N-336. Immigration attorney Rosanna Berardi, based in Buffalo, New York, told ABC7 without equivocation: "This proposal is entirely consistent with the broader message of the Trump administration, which wants to make legal immigration harder, more expensive, and less accessible — not just illegal immigration."

Form N-336: when the appeal becomes inaccessible

Form N-336, less well-known to the general public, is the recourse available to those whose naturalization application has been denied. It allows one to contest the denial before an immigration officer. Currently priced at $830 on paper, it would rise to $1,475 — a hike of 78%. For a household whose application has already been rejected, often for contestable administrative reasons, paying more than $1,400 for the right to defend oneself constitutes a formidable obstacle. The right of appeal exists in theory. In practice, it becomes the privilege of those who can afford it.

Attorney Berardi summed up the cumulative effect in a formulation I find devastatingly accurate: "When you simultaneously increase fees, eliminate waivers, and add new levels of verification such as neighborhood checks and an expanded examination of 'good moral character,' you are not streamlining a system. You are building walls inside it." Walls inside — for those who are already legally inside.

The phrase "walls inside" struck me. It says something essential about this administration: it is not only the physical border that is being reinforced. It is the path toward full belonging that is being lined with financial obstacles. A legal permanent resident for five years, who has done everything right, finds themselves trapped not by their file but by their bank balance.

How a notice of proposed rulemaking works

To be precise: the proposal published on June 22, 2026 in the Federal Register under reference RIN 1615-AD08 is not yet a law. It is a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) — a proposal that must traverse the American regulatory process before taking effect. This process includes a 60-day public comment period — through August 24, 2026 — during which individuals, organizations, attorneys, and elected officials can submit formal observations. The DHS is legally required to meaningfully consider these comments before publishing a final rule.

After the close of comments, the agency may modify, amend, or withdraw its proposal. The final rule, if published, generally takes effect 30 to 60 days after publication. Throughout this period, the current fees — $760 on paper, $710 online — remain in force. No implementation date is confirmed. This procedural window is not a guaranteed protection, but it is a window — and immigrant rights groups have already announced they intend to use it.

The precedents: a recurring regulatory war

This is not the first time the Trump administration has attempted to radically increase naturalization fees and eliminate fee waivers. In November 2019, during the first term, a similar proposal was published aiming to raise fees from $640 to $1,170. It triggered a wave of reactions: more than 80 members of Congress signed a letter of opposition, and groups such as the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) filed lawsuits. In December 2019, a federal judge in Northern California granted a preliminary injunction blocking the changes to fee waivers. The cycle resumes in 2026, with even higher amounts.

The firm Fragomen, specialized in corporate immigration law, noted in its June 22, 2026 analysis that the review process by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) had been received as early as April 27, 2026, signaling meticulous preparation of this proposal. The "Economically Significant" status assigned to the regulation confirms that the government itself acknowledges the major financial impact of the measure on the public.

This cycle — propose, block in court, repropose — has become the standard operating mode of the Trump administration on immigration. Each cycle lasts months. And during those months, valid immigrants hesitate, delay their applications, lose their window. The chilling effect is real even when the rule is not yet in force. That may be the most effective objective of all.

The ideological rupture that DHS claims

At the heart of the proposed rule lies an explicit doctrinal assertion. DHS writes in black and white: "DHS no longer believes naturalization benefit requests should get lower fees at the potential expense of other immigration benefits." Direct translation: the administration considers that previous governments — including Obama and Biden — were wrong to encourage naturalization through fees below real costs. The idea that citizenship is a public good worth encouraging is explicitly rejected. This is not a budgetary reform. It is a philosophical revision.

The regulation invokes Executive Order E.O. 14161 — entitled Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats — signed by Trump in January 2025, which instructs DHS to "vet and screen to the maximum extent possible all aliens already present on American territory." The cost of this enhanced vetting — background checks, interviews, examinations of "good moral character," social media screenings — is now entirely passed on to applicants. The immigrant no longer just pays for their file. They fund the surveillance machinery that examines them.

The DHS argument about ineligible applicants

DHS advances an additional argument to justify eliminating fee waivers: according to the proposal, "free or low-cost fees may encourage aliens who know or suspect that they are ineligible... to file an application anyway." It is a security argument disguised as a fiscal one. It assumes that fee waivers attract fraudulent applications. No data published in the regulation supports this claim. Former DHS official Adam Klein, co-founder of Globali.ai, responded to that argument in the pages of Newsweek: "The fundamental question is not whether USCIS should recover its costs, but whether the country wants to impose additional financial barriers on legal permanent residents who aspire to become Americans."

Klein also points to a troubling ambiguity in the proposal: "What remains unclear is what applicants will receive in return. For many, the perception may be that they are paying considerably more while receiving less in terms of accessibility and customer service." In other words, the additional money primarily funds the reinforcement of surveillance — not improvements to service. The immigrant pays more to be suspected more.

The fraudulent-applications argument leaves me perplexed. If ineligible people apply only because the fee is low, that suggests the problem lies in the vetting criteria — not in the fee. Reinforcing checks while fully passing their cost on to those who want to become citizens is a circular logic that deserves to be publicly challenged.

400% of the poverty threshold: what that actually represents

To understand who loses protection with the elimination of the $380 reduced rate for households under the 400% federal poverty threshold, one must translate that figure into real income. For 2026, the federal poverty threshold for a single person is approximately $15,650 annually. The threshold at 400% therefore corresponds to roughly $62,600 annually for one person. For a family of four, the poverty threshold is around $32,150 — meaning an annual income of $128,600 at 400%. These households are not poor in an absolute sense. Many are lower-middle-class workers, service sector employees, caregivers, security guards, restaurant cooks — immigrants who work, pay their taxes, and until now had access to the reduced rate.

With the proposed elimination, these households jump from the reduced rate of $380 directly to the full rate of $1,330. For a household earning $50,000 per year with two children, paying $1,330 in non-refundable administrative fees — with no certainty of success — is a considerable financial risk. If the application is denied and an appeal is necessary via Form N-336 at $1,475, total fees for a single naturalization journey easily exceed $2,800.

Hundreds of thousands of potential applicants per year

DHS itself acknowledges in the regulatory documents that the proposal could affect hundreds of thousands of legal permanent residents each year. According to the legal newsletter Ellis, which analyzed the proposal upon publication, naturalization applications in the United States number in the hundreds of thousands annually. The proportion of applicants who benefited from fee waivers or the reduced rate is not specified in the proposed regulation, but historical USCIS data indicates that roughly 40% of naturalization applicants had, in the past, obtained fee waivers during periods of high demand.

Former official Adam Klein framed the systemic stakes clearly: "This proposal marks a significant shift in the financial implications of acquiring U.S. citizenship. While USCIS primarily operates on fees and must recover its operating costs, significantly increasing naturalization fees threatens to make citizenship less attainable for those with limited financial means." And he recalled that historically, naturalization has been considered a public policy objective because citizens generally experience improved economic mobility, civic engagement, and long-term integration.

When I read these numbers, I think of the tens of thousands of families who had planned their naturalization for the coming year. People who had saved $400 or $600, whose file is ready, who passed the civics test. And who must now recalculate — or give up. This is not a statistical abstraction. It is a life choice deferred, perhaps indefinitely.

The immigrants who work, pay, and are excluded

The populations that benefited most from fee waivers and the reduced rate are precisely those the American economy relies on massively: agricultural workers, hospitality and food service employees, home care aides and healthcare workers, construction and maintenance workers. These workers are legal, documented, permanent residents for years. They often obtained their green card through family or humanitarian programs, not through skilled employment pathways. Their incomes are stable but modest. For them, $1,330 represents several weeks, even a month, of net pay.

The elimination of fee waivers does not affect skilled immigrants who transition to citizenship via H-1B visas or high-skilled employment pathways. These applicants, whose annual salaries frequently exceed $100,000, can absorb the hike without major difficulty. The proposal thus creates a wealth-selection effect: naturalization becomes more easily accessible for those who need it the least financially, and harder for those whose naturalization would have the greatest transformative impact on their lives.

Legal aid organizations under pressure

The impact is not limited to individuals. Nonprofit organizations specialized in legal aid for low-income immigrants — Catholic legal clinics, community aid centers, Legal Aid societies — find their mission fundamentally complicated. These organizations helped thousands of applicants compile fee waiver files, document their financial situations, and complete the forms. If fee waivers disappear, part of their role disappears with them — but not the demand. Organizations like the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) had already combated similar proposals in 2019, estimating that the new rules would have "significant consequences" for access to citizenship for tens of thousands of non-affluent individuals each year.

According to historical research by the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University cited during the 2019 regulatory battle, similar restrictions on fee waivers could reduce the number of naturalization applications filed annually by approximately 10%. On a base of hundreds of thousands of applications per year, that represents tens of thousands of people pushed out of the system — every year the rule is in force.

What strikes me in this file is the surgical precision of the exclusion. One is not preventing just anyone from naturalizing. One is preventing precisely those with low or lower-middle incomes. Those who represent the majority of immigrants. Those who are the most numerous in wanting to become fully American. The policy is targeted — and the targeting is social.

A consensus of alarm in the profession

The reactions from the specialized immigration legal community were almost unanimous in their critical reading of the proposal. Attorney Rosanna Berardi provided ABC7 with a particularly sharp two-part analysis. First part: the ideological consistency — "It is entirely consistent with the broader message of the Trump administration." Second part: the systemic effect — "You are building walls inside it." This reading positions the proposal not as a technical cost-recovery measure but as a deliberate political decision aimed at discouraging applications.

The firm Erickson Immigration Group, in its June 22, 2026 analysis, noted that the proposal represents one of the largest increases in the recent history of USCIS. It notes that DHS could, following the comment period, "adjust fee levels based on stakeholder feedback, modify implementation timelines, or incorporate additional policy changes." This procedural reminder is not merely a formality: in previous regulatory battles, public and legal pressure did lead to modifications.

Signals from the academic community and think tanks

The firm Fragomen, a global reference in corporate immigration law, published a technical analysis of the proposal on June 22, 2026, documenting what is arguably the most striking fact that the mainstream media often omitted: for applicants currently eligible for the $380 reduced rate, the proposed increase is not 75% but 250%. That figure radically changes the political reading of the measure. It is not a uniform 75% hike. It is a 75% hike for the more affluent among applicants, and a 250% hike for the most precarious.

On the think tank side, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which favors immigration restriction, had previously supported in earlier analyses the principle of "beneficiary-pays" as a way to ensure USCIS does not operate at a deficit. That position, marginal under Democratic administrations, is now official DHS doctrine. The political divide on this question is sharp, and both camps are entrenched on philosophically incompatible positions regarding the role of the state in integrating legal immigrants.

I favor strong, orderly, law-respecting legal immigration. And that is precisely why this proposal worries me: it does not target undocumented immigrants. It penalizes people who did exactly what they were told to do. Those who waited, followed the procedures, paid their taxes. Punishing their loyalty with a bill they cannot absorb is an aberration.

Invoking the 2025 executive orders

The proposed rule justifies the fee increase partly through the cost of new verification procedures mandated by executive orders signed by Trump in January 2025. Executive Order E.O. 14161 requires DHS to implement "maximum" vetting of all foreign nationals present on American territory. In practice, this means: enhanced background checks, social media screenings, additional interviews, expanded evaluation of "good moral character." All these steps have a cost. And DHS has chosen to transfer that cost entirely to applicants.

There is a circular logic here that deserves to be named. The administration unilaterally decides to strengthen verification procedures, within the framework of a security policy it itself enacted. It then decides that the cost of these enhanced verifications must be borne by the immigrants who are their subjects. It is as if a state decided to build a wall around a prison, then sent the bill to the inmates. What is at stake here is not administrative efficiency, but the question of who pays for a security policy chosen by a political majority.

USCIS, an agency funded solely by fees

An important piece of context: unlike other federal agencies, USCIS is funded almost exclusively by filing fees. It does not receive budget credits from American taxpayer dollars for its day-to-day operations. This funding model, in place for decades, is regularly invoked by the agency to justify fee increases. The 2026 proposal explicitly cites the need for USCIS to "recover the full cost of providing all these services," under section 286(m) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

This legal framework is real. But it does not mandate the elimination of fee waivers or the reduced rate. It mandates cost recovery at the aggregate agency level, not necessarily at the level of each individual applicant. Previous administrations had resolved this equation by practicing a form of cross-subsidization: high fees paid by employers for skilled work visas (H-1B, etc.) partially funded the maintenance of accessible rates for naturalization. The Trump administration chooses to end this internal solidarity.

The fact that USCIS is fee-funded is often presented as an inescapable constraint. But it is a political choice, not a law of nature. Other Western democracies fund their civic integration services through the state's general budget. The choice not to do so in the United States is a decision, renewed each budget cycle. And that decision has very unequal consequences depending on one's income.

The post-OBBBA regulatory wave

The proposed naturalization fee hike fits into a broader context of immigration cost escalation since the signing of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (OBBBA, Public Law 119-21) by Trump on July 4, 2025. This law introduced or reinforced several non-waivable fees: a minimum $100 asylum application fee (a first in American history), an annual fee for asylum seekers throughout the processing period of their case, and a new $24 entry fee for Form I-94. These amounts, initially written into the law, were indexed to inflation for subsequent fiscal years.

In March 2026, USCIS had already increased premium processing fees for skilled work visas, reflecting inflation from 2023–2025. DHS had also proposed in May 2026 raising the fees for Form I-246 (application for stay of deportation) from $155 to $755 — a hike of 387%. The 75% increase in naturalization fees is therefore part of an overall movement aimed at making immigrants pay — including the most vulnerable — for the cost of the bureaucracy that processes them. And sometimes deports them.

The concurrent denaturalization campaign

What the general public has insufficiently contextualized is that this naturalization fee hike arrives simultaneously with an intensification of denaturalization campaigns. In December 2025, The New York Times revealed that internal USCIS directives ordered regional offices to "submit 100 denaturalization cases per month" to the immigration investigations division for fiscal year 2026. Denaturalization — the revocation of American citizenship — is a rare, regulated process subject to a high evidentiary standard. But the combination of an intensification of denaturalization cases and a hike in the cost of access to naturalization paints a coherent landscape: making access to citizenship more difficult and more costly, while making existing citizenship less permanent for some.

The immigration policy of the Trump second-term administration is not monolithic. It combines elements of legitimate security firmness — enhanced background checks, anti-document fraud efforts — with elements that are more consistent with a project of systematic discouragement of low-income legal immigration. The historian Mae Ngai, cited in several academic analyses, had already noted that the United States has historically alternated between periods of openness and restriction, but that restrictions have rarely so directly targeted the economic status of legal applicants.

I acknowledge the legitimacy of strengthening immigration checks. But when one speaks of mass denaturalization on one side and a drastic fee hike on the other, one is no longer talking about administrative rigor. One is talking about a political vision of who deserves to be American. And that vision troubles me deeply, even as I understand some of the legitimate frustrations on which it draws.

The 60-day window as a battlefield

The public comment period open through August 24, 2026 is viewed by immigrant advocacy organizations as a strategic opportunity. Historically, NPRMs receiving a large volume of critical public comments have sometimes been modified or withdrawn. In 2019–2020, the similar proposal received tens of thousands of unfavorable comments, including coordinated letters from legal clinics, universities, religious organizations, and members of Congress. The combination of regulatory pressure and legal challenges ultimately blocked the most draconian changes.

In 2026, organizations like the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, CASA, and others are already preparing coordinated comments. Several specialized law firms have set up informational pages for their clients, urging them to act before August 24. The mobilization also includes Democratic elected officials, some of whom have already begun preparing public statements of opposition. Mayors of several major American cities with large immigrant populations have also signaled their intention to file comments in the rulemaking process.

Potential judicial remedies

If the rule is finalized without substantial changes, legal challenges are highly probable. In 2019–2020, a preliminary injunction had been granted by the federal court for the Northern District of California on the basis of a likely violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) — the law governing the federal regulatory process. Advocacy groups could invoke similar arguments in 2026. Other avenues might include arguments based on Equal Protection, arguing that eliminating fee waivers discriminates in practice against low-income immigrants with respect to access to a fundamental right.

Organizations CASA and Public Citizen had already demonstrated during 2024–2025 regulatory battles over other USCIS fees their ability to obtain rapid injunctions. Repetition of this type of litigation is nearly inevitable if DHS finalizes the rule without major modification. But each litigation cycle takes time. And during that time, uncertainty itself discourages legitimate applicants from submitting their files, creating what some legal scholars call the "chilling effect" — the cooling of the exercise of a right by the threat of its cost or complexity.

I have a certain respect for American judicial institutions when they resist executive overreach. But I am weary of watching this cycle repeat: an administration proposes something extreme, organizations challenge it in court, courts partially block it, the administration reproposals in a slightly modified form. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people live in uncertainty. This is not a dignified way to govern a state of law.

What DHS says officially

DHS provided Newsweek with an official two-pronged justification. First prong: financial necessity. A spokesperson stated that the changes "are part of a periodic fee review," and that the current fee structure "does not cover all costs related to processing applications." Second prong: political priority. The agency emphasizes that naturalization is "the most significant immigration benefit" available to immigrants, and that this level of importance justifies thorough — and therefore costly — processing.

The agency also defends its decision to eliminate fee waivers by arguing that it will improve efficiency and minimize abuse of the system. It maintains that the demand for naturalization will remain stable despite the hike, since it is an "inelastic benefit" that candidates will seek to obtain regardless of higher costs. That is an audacious — even cynical — economic calculation: if people want to become citizens, they will find the money. That reasoning deliberately ignores that some will not find the money, and that those are precisely the people whose naturalization would have most transformed their lives.

Trump: the necessary evil that damages the institutions it claims to protect

Donald Trump remains, for parts of the West, a political actor whose firmness on certain issues — border security, the balance of power with authoritarian powers, refusal of blanket amnesty — responded to legitimate frustrations in a portion of the population. Those frustrations exist. They are real. But Trump's governance on legal immigration traces a troubling trajectory for American institutions: using the regulatory lever to socially reshape the body of citizenship, without parliamentary debate, through administrative channels, targeting precisely the most vulnerable among the most legitimate. This is not rigor. It is institutionalized arbitrariness.

What concerns defenders of the Western rule of law is not the 75% hike in itself — it could be defensible in a different framework. It is the accumulation: fee increases, elimination of fee waivers, denaturalization campaigns, enhanced social media surveillance, heightened "good moral character" requirements. Taken together, these elements sketch not a more efficient immigration system, but a more restrictive, more costly, and more exclusionary one — precisely for those who made the legal choice to integrate into American society. The West needs legal and orderly immigration. It needs legal immigrants to naturalize, integrate, and participate. Placing financial barriers on that path is sawing the branch on which a part of American democratic vitality rests.

I can defend Trump on border firmness, on refusing unlimited openness, on demanding respect for the law. But this specific proposal, I cannot defend. It punishes people who followed the rules. It transforms citizenship into a class privilege. And in the West I want to see survive and thrive, citizenship should never be for sale to the highest bidder — nor locked away from the insufficiently funded.

Two incompatible conceptions of national identity

The battle over naturalization fees reveals a deep ideological fracture about what it means to become American. On one side, a vision that could be called integration as an encouraged process: American society has an interest in its legal permanent residents becoming citizens, because citizenship creates deeper civic, economic, and social ties. That vision guided American policy for much of the 20th century and early 21st. On the other side, a meritocratic-restrictive vision: citizenship is a privilege that must be earned not only through duration of residence and passing exams, but also through the financial capacity to bear its administrative costs.

The DHS proposal makes an explicit choice for the second vision. And that choice has implications that extend far beyond the debate over form fees. It says something fundamental about which America wants to admit into its most exclusive club — full and complete citizenship. If the answer is "primarily those who can afford it," then the ideal of democratic meritocracy — where anyone can become American by working hard and respecting the rules — is profoundly fractured. And countries that look to the United States as a model of successful integration will be right to question.

The European mirror

The international comparison is instructive. In France, the filing fees for a naturalization application are 55 euros. In Germany, fees for obtaining German citizenship are 255 euros, with possible reductions for those in precarious situations. In Canada, citizenship application fees are $630 Canadian (approximately $460 USD), but with deferral and financial aid mechanisms. In all these countries, the dominant logic is that civic integration benefits the entire society and merits partial collective investment. The American proposal of $1,330, with no fee waivers, no reduced rate, places the United States among the most expensive developed countries for naturalization — and that is a deliberate, assumed, documented choice.

It is not without irony that the country that most readily defines itself as "a nation of immigrants" is building, under the guise of budget management, the highest walls between its legal residents and their full national belonging. The West, as a whole, must maintain robust legal immigration to compensate for its demographic deficits, fuel its economic growth, and maintain the vitality of its open societies. Every excessive financial barrier to naturalization is a tacit invitation to partial integration, civic disengagement, and permanent in-between status.

I am not sure of everything in this file. I do not know if a public comment period will change anything in this administration's intentions. I do not know if the courts will intervene in time. What I know is that when a country starts measuring the worth of a future citizen by their ability to pay an administrative invoice, something has broken in the social contract. And that rupture deserves to be named.

The psychological effect of the announcement

Beyond the numbers and procedures, the June 22, 2026 announcement has an immediate and concrete impact on hundreds of thousands of legal permanent residents who closely follow regulatory developments. Community online forums, immigrant mutual-aid Facebook groups, diaspora association networks — everywhere, the news circulated rapidly. The question that recurs most often is not legal. It is existential: "Can I still afford to become American?" That question, asked in English, Spanish, Tagalog, Hindi, Haitian Creole, and Brazilian Portuguese, sums up on its own the human impact of the proposal.

Immigration professionals reported a significant increase in inquiries from worried clients in the hours following publication of the regulation. Some accelerated compilation of their files, hoping to submit before any potential effective date. Others asked their attorneys whether currently available fee waivers could still be used — the answer being yes, since the proposal is not yet in force. But uncertainty alone is enough to paralyze families who had everything planned. That is what administrative law specialists call the chilling effect — and it operates well before a rule takes effect.

Lives suspended on an administrative decision

Behind each Form N-400, there is a life trajectory. Immigrants who left their country with the intention of permanently settling in the United States, who built their families here, enrolled their children in American schools, voted in local school board elections, joined civic associations, paid their municipal, state, and federal taxes. These people do not need to be guided toward citizenship through reduced fees out of charity. They need the path to remain accessible for those who have met all legal conditions, regardless of the thickness of their wallets.

The DHS proposal does not distinguish between the fraudulent immigrant and the honest one, between those seeking to circumvent the system and those who have scrupulously respected it for years. It distinguishes only between those who can pay $1,330 and those who cannot. That distinction — purely financial, blind to all other merits — is the most unjust of barriers in a system that claims to value work, responsibility, and respect for the law. American citizenship should not have an entry price reserved for the affluent classes.

I do not claim to know the ideal way to fund USCIS. I am not an immigration economist. But I know what I see when a single administrative proposal erases decades of progressive integration policy, and replaces the idea of an open society with that of a club whose entry is paid at the gate. What I see is a regression. And regressions deserve to be called by their name.

What is really at stake behind the numbers

The DHS proposal to raise naturalization fees to $1,330, while eliminating fee waivers and the $380 reduced rate for households under 400% of the poverty threshold, is not only a bookkeeping question. It is a question of values. It asks: what kind of society does the United States want to be? Does it want to be a nation where the path to citizenship is open to all who meet the legal criteria, regardless of their financial situation? Or does it want to be a nation where citizenship is the reward for a certain prior economic comfort? The answer to this question has consequences that extend far beyond the columns of the Federal Register.

The public comment period runs through August 24, 2026. The rule is not final. Legal challenges are probable if the rule is finalized as written. Members of Congress have the opportunity to act. Immigrant advocacy organizations are mobilized. But whatever the procedural outcome, the political signal sent by this proposal is already in the minds of hundreds of thousands of legal permanent residents reading the news in this early summer of 2026: the America you chose to join legally, following all its rules, is raising the price of your belonging. And some of you will not be able to afford it.

The near future: what to watch

In the weeks and months to come, several elements will be determinative. First, the volume and quality of public comments submitted before August 24, 2026 — immigrant rights organizations are preparing massive submissions. Second, legislative reactions: members of Congress may attempt to include fee waiver protection provisions in budget texts or amendments. Third, judicial challenges: if DHS finalizes the rule, one or more preliminary injunctions may be requested immediately, as in 2019. Fourth, application filing trends: even before the rule takes effect, the announcement already affects applicants' behavior — some will accelerate their procedures, others will defer them hoping for a reversal.

What is certain is that the debate over access to American citizenship is far from closed. The June 2026 proposal has relaunched its terms with fresh brutality. And in that debate, the least heard voices are often those with the most to lose: those hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants — quiet, hardworking, law-abiding — who dreamed of voting one day and who, this month, learned that dream was going to cost them far more than they had planned.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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