U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has published a Federal Register notice announcing the first inflation adjustment to the immigration-related fees created by the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (better known as H.R. 1). The notice, issued 1 October 2026, raises a slate of statutory fees—among them the $1,000 parole fee, several humanitarian-based filings, and premium processing surcharges—by roughly 3.4 percent to reflect the change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) from July 2025 to July 2026. The revised amounts take effect for petitions and applications post-marked on or after 16 October 2026. Although many employment-based forms (I-129, I-140, I-765, etc.) already face separate fee increases still moving through the rule-making process, today’s notice matters immediately for employers that routinely rely on parole programs, humanitarian re-parole, and replacement Employment Authorization Documents. Petitioners who mis-calculate the new fees will see their filings rejected, potentially jeopardising work-authorisation continuity and underlying immigration status. The inflation mechanism was hard-wired into H.R. 1 to spare Congress the political headache of revisiting fee schedules each year. Unlike discretionary fee rules that are subject to lengthy comment periods and potential litigation, the HR-1 adjustments are automatic and therefore highly predictable—yet they still arrive with little public warning beyond the Federal Register. Immigration counsel are advising corporate clients to download the new fee table, re-tool cheque-cutting protocols, and brief foreign nationals whose self-petitioned filings (for example, certain EB-1 self-sponsorships) may be in flight in mid-October. Practically, the increases are modest—most rise by US $10—but they come at a time when overall mobility programme costs are rising because of higher prevailing wages, premium-processing surcharges, and new state-level payroll taxes that apply to remote workers. Employers that batch-file large numbers of humanitarian parole or TPS-related EAD renewals should consider accelerating submissions to beat the 15-October post-mark deadline. Looking ahead, the notice re-confirms that a broader USCIS fee rule—currently under review at the Office of Management and Budget—will overhaul the main I-129 and I-140 schedules in early 2027. For now, however, H.R. 1’s CPI-linked mechanism is the only change companies must absorb this quarter.
Source: Federal Register
