Filing an immigrant or non-immigrant petition for an employee soon?  It is probably going to be a little more expensive.  Facing a large budget shortfall, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (“USCIS”) is changing filing fees effective November 23, 2010.  While most fees are increasing (some substantially), USCIS appears to have taken some pity on petitioner employers and actually decreased some categories of fees.

Unlike previous years, employers hiring specialized foreign workers now have it easy in some ways.  For example, the number of petitions received by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for H-1B specialty occupation visas is well below the established cap for fiscal year 2011, allowing for new filings even as the fiscal year starts.  With some good news, however, comes some bad.