US naturalisation fee would rise to $1,330, and fee waivers would end

On 23 June 2026 the Department of Homeland Security proposed raising the fee to apply for United States citizenship from $760 to $1,330 on paper. The larger change sits underneath the number: The same proposal would remove the reduced fee for lower-income applicants and abolish fee waivers entirely, leaving one exemption in place for armed forces members.

What the proposal actually changes

The document is a notice of proposed rulemaking, not a rule in force. It was published at 91 FR 37500 under DHS Docket No. USCIS-2026-0265 and RIN 1615-AD08, and it would amend 8 CFR Part 106, the part of the regulations that carries the US Citizenship and Immigration Services fee schedule.

Form N-400 is the application for naturalisation — the last filing on the path from permanent residence to citizenship. Form N-336 is the request for a hearing before an immigration officer after an N-400 is denied. Both are proposed to rise, and the increases are steeper on the appeal route than on the application itself.

The $50 discount for filing online under 8 CFR 106.1(g) is not proposed for change, so the gap between paper and electronic filing stays where it is while both rise.

The removal of the safety valves is the real story

Two mechanisms currently soften the fee for applicants who cannot pay it. An applicant whose household income is at or below 400% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines can file Form N-400 at a reduced fee. An applicant in greater difficulty can request a waiver on Form I-912, which is adjudicated before the N-400 itself and, if approved, lets the application proceed without payment.

The proposal would end both. It would strike the reduced fee under proposed 8 CFR 106.2(b)(3) and remove fee-waiver eligibility for N-400 and N-336 under proposed 8 CFR 106.3(a)(3)(i). DHS frames this as the beneficiary-pays principle: Setting fees at the level that recovers the full cost of adjudicating the form.

One exemption survives. Current and former armed forces service members remain exempt when they naturalise under sections 328 and 329 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. It is the only boundary the proposal leaves untouched.

The department’s own figures show what is at stake. It estimates a median annual transfer of $427.4 million from applicants who already pay the full fee, within a range of $397.4 million to $457.5 million. Ending the reduced fee would move a further $16.7 million a year, and ending waivers about $196.4 million a year — roughly $1.67 billion across ten years. The reduced fee is a young mechanism in practice: Reduced-fee filings averaged 0.3% of N-400 receipts across FY2019–23, then rose to 3.2% in the year after the 2024 Fee Rule took effect.

A correction in July restored a missing block

On 8 July 2026 DHS published a correction at 91 FR 42144. It inserts material at page 37547 of the original document, immediately before the heading “3. USCIS Form N-400” — the Paperwork Reduction Act burden estimates covering Form I-912 and Form N-336.

The restored text puts the N-336 collection at 3,788 paper respondents taking 2.567 hours each and 1,263 online respondents taking 2.5 hours each, for a total annual burden of 12,882 hours and $2,601,265. Checking the June document confirms the omission: None of those figures appears in it.

This is procedural detail, but not trivial. Burden estimates are exactly the part of a rulemaking that lawyers and civil-society organisations contest, and a comment period that ran with the section missing is a point commenters can raise.

Where this sits beside an investment-migration budget

Comparing routes to citizenship requires holding the categories apart. An investment or contribution builds or transfers an asset. An administrative fee does neither: It is not recoverable, it produces nothing, and here it falls at the end of the path, after years of lawful residence.

For an EB-5 investor the naturalisation fee is small against the capital threshold, and it should not move a decision on its own. In most citizenship-by-investment and residence-by-investment programmes the weight sits at the other end — in the initial contribution or investment plus due-diligence charges, set by each jurisdiction’s own law and revised on its own cycle. Investors should read the fee schedule published by the authority itself rather than a third-party summary table.

What is not settled

This is a proposal. The comment period closes on 24 August 2026, comments must go through regulations.gov to count, and the final rule may differ from what was proposed. No effective date has been set, and United States immigration fee rules have repeatedly been challenged in federal court.

None of that makes the timetable in the proposal a schedule. An application filed for the right reasons — the residence period satisfied, the language and civics requirements met, a clean compliance history — remains a stronger application than one rushed in on a rumour about fees.

What to watch

Three things over the coming months: What the comment period produces after it closes on 24 August; the final rule and whatever effective date it carries; and Form G-1055, the USCIS fee schedule, which is the only document that reflects what is actually payable on any given day.