In United States immigration policies and practices, all of the incentives are tilted the wrong way. Immigrating to the United States legally is time-consuming and expensive; crossing the border illegally is not only free but comes with plenty of free stuff and benefits.

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Now, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is about to tilt those incentives still further the wrong way, as they are raising the cost of becoming an American citizen.

Fees associated with becoming an American citizen are set to rise on April 1, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced. 

The cost of filing an Application for Naturalization form, or N-400, will go up from $640 — or $725 if biometric work is needed — to $760. Meanwhile, the overall price for filing the forms needed for legal permanent residency, also known as the “green card” packet, will rise from $1,760 to $3,005, per USA Today.

“USCIS conducted a comprehensive biennial fee review and determined that current fees do not recover the full cost of providing adjudication and naturalization services,” the Department of Homeland Security announcement read. “DHS is adjusting the fee schedule to fully recover costs and maintain adequate service.”

Granted, costs do grow, especially when the country is in the throes of Bidenflation. But can no one see what the implications of this are?

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Democrat Governors and Mayors Throw Hissy Fits at Each Other Over Shipping Illegal Aliens Back and Forth

This entire controversy has been boiling over for a while now, and it's common for people on the left to paint the right as being "anti-immigrant." That's not true. People who criticize the mess on the southern border are not "anti-immigrant," they are "anti-illegal immigrants," and that is a difference not in degree but rather a difference in kind.

The number of people coming into the United States legally is significant.

USCIS administered the Oath of Allegiance to more than 878,500 new citizens in fiscal year 2023, saying it eliminated its backlog of naturalization applications.

According to the DHS, there were approximately 9 million legal permanent residents of the United States who could apply for U.S. citizenship but hadn’t yet as of Jan. 1, 2023.

These good people did things the right way. They went through the process to become legal permanent residents and then citizens, and we welcome them and are glad to have them. They did so, presumably because they saw good reasons to want to become American. There are exceptions, of course, but in the main, we should applaud the people who go through the torturous process of legally immigrating.

Now these incentives are moving downhill. Those good people who did things the right way are now going to be less inclined to move ahead. The legal permanent residents are less incentivized to become citizens, and people who are here on temporary visas have less reason to seek permanent residency, knowing that the bar for citizenship keeps creeping higher. And worst of all, people who are considering sneaking across the border are further incentivized to do so by the generous treatment they get on arrival.

This is wrong, and it must end.