U.S. — The Trump administration announced a plan Monday to increase citizenship application fees, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The proposed regulation would eliminate fee waivers for citizenship cases.

The regulation would increase the fee for paper citizenship applications from $760 to $1,330. For online citizenship applications, the fee would increase from $710 to $1,280. Application fees to request USCIS to reconsider a citizenship request denial would increase by $645. The plan also eliminates a fee reduction option for immigrants whose household income is at or below 400% of the federal poverty line. Fee exemptions for service members seeking citizenship would remain in place.

The Department of Homeland Security stated in its proposed regulation that the fee hikes are necessary to fully subsidize the processing of citizenship applications. USCIS is largely funded by the fees it charges. The Department of Homeland Security oversees U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The department stated that it no longer believes naturalization benefit requests should receive lower fees at the potential expense of other immigration benefits, adding, "Although DHS has historically limited the fees for (citizenship-related applications) to fulfill previous administrations' priorities of encouraging naturalization, DHS no longer believes naturalization benefit requests should get lower fees at the potential expense of other immigration benefits."

Doug Rand, a former senior USCIS official, said, "The only credible explanation for jacking up citizenship fees in isolation is that Trump 2.0 is in a hurry to create even more undue barriers for legal immigrants."

The proposed changes are part of a regulation that must undergo further steps in the federal rulemaking process. The public will be allowed to submit comments on the proposed changes over a 60-day window.