Land of the fee

AMERICA, land of the free.

This is the image most people associate with the United States, especially since the Statue of Liberty has -- at its base, the inscription saying, "Give me your poor, tired, hungry masses yearning to be free," or something like that.

The image is not without basis. In America, you are:

o free to apply for a visa. There is a fee to apply but the decision to apply or not is without cost.

o free to overstay, especially if you do not apply for an extension of your stay or apply for change of nonimmigrant status. Because you did not file for an extension, there is no need to file the 140-dollar fee.

o free to exercise your right to work using documents, valid or not. Of course, being caught with fake documents could cause your removal or deportation.

But even then, you could fly free by not posting bond, staying in detention free of charge until the next free flight to the Philippines comes along. The food inside BICE detention cells is free and so is the company of other detainees. In some cases before you are transferred to a BICE facility, you would first have to enjoy the free company of other persons detained at a city jail cell ö which could include petty thieves, and some accused of aggravated felony and other crimes.

These freedoms have not deterred Filipinos from applying for immigrant and nonimmigrant visas. In fact, while the number of applicants worldwide has declined after Sept. 11, 2001, the number of Filipinos paying the 100-dollar visa fee to apply for a nonimmigrant visa increased.

In fact, 302,199 Filipinos were issued nonimmigrant visas, approximately half of whom belonged to the tourist, temporary visitor category. Of the total, 104,190 chose California as the state of destination.

One million foreign nationals, Filipinos included were admitted as lawful permanent residents or immigrants. The Philippines is fourth with 51,308, behind Mexico, India and China.

Land of the fee

UNDERSTANDABLY, each country imposes fees for foreigners seeking admission as temporary visitors or permanent residents. The tourist visa used to be free. The administrative costs, however, the Department of State said, were so huge that they decided to impose a visa fee of 20 dollars, then 45 dollars and now 100 dollars.

Even fees to apply for working, business-related and immigrant visas have increased.

After paying the 100-dollar visa fee and being admitted into the US you need to pay 140 dollars if you want to extend your stay. If you find an employer who would sponsor you as an H-1B worker (for occupations that require bachelor's degree) the filing fee is 1,130 dollars.

If the employer wants to facilitate your petition processing, the BCIS has been kind enough to offer you the privilege of paying 1,000 dollars as premium processing fee. The BCIS guarantees a decision in 15 days. The decision is not necessarily an approval. As long as they respond to the H-1B petition within the 15-day period, they have complied with the spirit of the regulation.

A request to submit more evidence -- called Request for Evidence of RFE -- is a response. Therefore, the BCIS could give the employer an RFE and there goes your 1,000-dollar premium processing fee.

Within the six-year period, if the employer decides to file an immigrant visa petition for you in any of the employment-based categories, the employer must pay the advertising fee (to put the advertisement for your job in a newspaper of general circulation, which approximately costs upwards of 1,500 dollars).

You are lucky if the employer has an in-house legal department or HRD that knows how to comply with the certification process. Otherwise, you have to pay the lawyer's fee.

After obtaining the labor certification, the immigrant visa petition is filed, then you have to pay the 135-dollar filing fee. Another bit of good news is the ability to file both the immigrant petition (on form I-140) and the adjustment application (on form I-485) at the same time. Then you also have to pay the 255-dollar adjustment of status fee, the medical examination fee -- roughly 100 dollars -- photos, fingerprints and others.

Just by the end of July, Representative Nancy Johnson and Senator Chris Dodd, both Democrats from Connecticut introduced a bill that would require intra-company transferees (L-1) applicants to file and obtain an attestation with the Department of Labor before the L-1 petition could be filed.

In the past only the H visa category (H-1A and H-1C) were required to have attestations. Now, the L-1 applicants would be required to do so.

And the H visa applicants? The Democratic Senator and Congresswoman want to make the 1,000-dollar premium processing permanent.

No surprise. Remember the American saying, "There is no such thing as a free lunch."

In May 2003, the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas reported that remittances by OFWs -- eight million nurses, IT professionals, engineers, domestic helpers and other Filipinos working abroad -- reached 3.29 billion dollars. And that is only for the first five months of 2003. With seven months to go, OFWs are expected to keep the Philippines in the black, despite the fall of the peso and the stock market because of the Makati mutiny.

Trillanes and the other members of the Magdalo group also believe in freedom. "Nangarap silang susuportahan ng mamamayan" (They dreamed the citizenry would support them), but they woke up, hours before the extended deadline.

Of course, if they somehow manage to escape -- like Fathur Al Ghozi did -- and go to the US, they could apply for political asylum. Atong Ang did.

There is no filing fee.

You can reach Cris Aranda, executive director of the Immigrant Visa Center, at usvisacenter@yahoo.com. Or call him in the Philippines at +632 634-8717, +632 683-0615 and +632 683-0617 or in San Francisco, California at +415 834-1052.