What changed
On October 1, 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a notice in the Federal Register titled “Fiscal Year 2027 Inflation Adjustment to H.R. 1 Immigration Fees.” USCIS announced it in its newsroom the day before, September 30. The fees in question were created by H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the President signed on July 4, 2025. That law sets these fees and requires that they be adjusted for inflation every fiscal year. The first adjustment took effect on January 1, 2026; this is the second.
The new amounts apply to requests postmarked on or after October 16, 2026. In the notice’s words: “Any immigration benefit request postmarked on or after October 16, 2026 without the proper filing fee will be rejected.” These are the increases, as USCIS lists them:
- Annual fee for an asylum application that is still pending (Form I-589): from $102 to $105.
- Immigration parole fee (Form I-131): from $1,020 to $1,050.
- Initial work permit (Form I-765) for an asylum applicant, for a person on parole, or for a person with TPS: from $560 to $570.
- Application for Temporary Protected Status (Form I-821): from $510 to $520.
The notice shows the math. The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers was 323.048 in July 2025 and 333.918 in July 2026, an increase of about 3.36 percent. H.R. 1 requires most of these fees to be rounded down to the next lowest multiple of $10, and the annual asylum fee to be rounded down to the nearest dollar. That rounding is why some fees rose by $10, the parole fee by $30, the annual asylum fee by $3, and several did not move at all.
Who this is about
The notice is about people who will mail one of these specific requests on or after October 16, 2026: people with a pending asylum application who owe the annual fee, people asking for a first work permit based on a pending asylum application, on parole or on TPS, people applying for TPS, and people to whom the parole fee applies. The notice recalls that H.R. 1 set that parole fee at $1,000 for anyone paroled into the United States “who does not meet an exception.”
What the notice does not change is just as specific. According to its own table, these H.R. 1 fees stay the same for fiscal year 2027: the initial asylum application fee ($100), the renewal or extension of an asylum applicant’s work permit ($275, because H.R. 1 does not provide for adjusting it), the renewal or extension of a parole or TPS work permit ($280), the re-parole work permit ($280), the Special Immigrant Juvenile fee ($250) and the Form I-94 fee ($24). The notice deals only with the H.R. 1 fees; it does not list or change the other filing fees on USCIS forms.
What it does not mean
- It does not mean every USCIS fee went up. Only the fees in the list above rose; seven other lines in the notice’s table stayed where they were.
- It does not tie the new amount to the day USCIS receives or decides a request. The date in the notice is the postmark: on or after October 16, 2026.
- It is not a one-time change. H.R. 1 requires an inflation adjustment every fiscal year, so these amounts are expected to be recalculated again next year.
- It does not change who has to pay these fees or how exemptions and fee waivers work. The notice only changes amounts; it points to earlier H.R. 1 actions, including DHS’s April 29, 2026 interim final rule, for those procedures.
What to do with this
The amounts above come from USCIS’s own notice and announcement, linked at the top of this page. Whether a particular fee, exemption or form fits someone’s situation is a question for a licensed immigration attorney or a DOJ-accredited representative, and the organizations below are a place to start. Advocasí helps prepare paperwork once a qualified advisor has said which path applies.
Advocasí is not a law firm. We explain what a policy says and help people prepare their own paperwork once a qualified advisor has told them which path applies.