Monday, December 9, 2019

Fees Rising for Citizenship and Alien Registration Files

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, the genealogy boom has hit a roadblock.

"At a time when researching family history is booming, the nation’s immigration and citizenship agency has proposed dramatically hiking fees to access records from the first half of the 20th century. The move has outraged professional and amateur genealogists, who argue that the increase would effectively put valuable immigration information out of reach for many.

The fees would nearly triple, and in many cases, they would rise nearly 500 percent, from $130 to $625 to obtain a single paper file. The little-known Genealogy Program administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services allows genealogists, family historians and other researchers to obtain citizenship and alien registration files, visa applications and other records documenting the lives of deceased immigrants who arrived in the United States between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries."

Reach the entire article by searching "genealogy" on FaceBook. The headline you're looking for is "The genealogy boom has hit a roadblock. The Trump administration plans huge fee hikes for immigration records."  Scroll down to the sixth paragraph and click the "public campaign" link. The page has a clear explanation of the background of the rate hike and instructions for submitting your objections to the increase in fees.

Comments will be accepted until December 30, 2019. If enough people object, it may result in a change in this policy.

No comments:

Post a Comment