how much does a visa cost : When you apply for a visa you will always be charged certain fees. Moreover, the payment of visa fees is mandatory; if you don’t pay them your application won’t be even considered. Therefore it’s very important that you always get information about this issue prior to your visa application.
How Much Does a Visa Cost?
Visa applicants ask often about how much does a visa cost? Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all type of answer to this question. The reason is that the cost of your visa application depends on certain factors. To help you have a better sense of it, below we’ve listed some important factors that determine how much a visa will cost to you
- Your nationality
- The embassy you’re applying to
- The type of visa
A few comments on each
Nationality: To a certain degree, embassies of one country apply the same visa fees at any location. However, this is not always the case. In some countries, visa applicants have to pay more or less compared to elsewhere.
The embassy: Not all embassies deal with the same amount of visa applications. The ones that collect a particularly high number of applications charge typically higher fees as there is more work to do for them and more personnel is required.
The type of visa: There are many types of visas and for each of them there are different fees. In principle, this is due to the fact that for some of them a lot more processing work has to be delivered. For instance, an immigration type of visa requires a much detailed review and additional requirements. As such it involves more paperwork and more people to work on it, thus it costs higher.
But now let’s see some numbers in the case of a US visa.
For a US non-immigrant type of visa, you’re going to be charged the following application fees
- US Visitor Visa (B-1 and B-2) – $160
- Student Visa (F and M) – $160
- Visa for Media and Journalists (I) – $160
- Exchange Visitor Visa (J) – $160
- Temporary Worker Visa (H) – $190
- Victims of human trafficking (T) – $160
- Victims of Criminal Events (U) – $160
- Intracompany transferees (L) – $190
- people with extraordinary abilities and achievements (O) – $190
- athletes, entertainers and artists (P) – $190
- Visa For Religious Workers (R) – $190
- International Cultural Exchange Programs Visa (Q) -$190
- Visa for Investors and Traders (E) – $205
- K Visa – $265
On the other hand, for a US immigration based visa you’re going to pay the following processing fees
- Family-based immigration visa – $325
- Employment-based immigration visa – $345
- Other immigrant visas – $205
- Former Iraqi and Afghan employees of the US Government – No fee
Side note: We have only listed the processing fees. However, immigrant visa applications are petition-based. That means you must initially file a petition to the US immigration authorities and upon approval you can apply for an immigration visa. Therefore, you’re going to be charged a fee for your petition filing as well.
The cost of filing a petition for a US immigrant visa:
- Immigrant Petition for Relative (I- 130) – $535
- Orphan (intercountry adoption) immediate relative petition (I-600, I-800) – $775
Keep always in mind that visa application fees can change. Therefore we recommend that you always refer to official sources for visa fees before starting the application. In this way you know what to expect well on time and you avoid unnecessary stress.
