For people seeking work or an escape to a better life in the United States, it's going to cost about two times the current amount, following a move by the Trump administration to hike fees on various immigration applications.
Michelle Mendez, director of defending vulnerable programs at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), calls the move an assault on immigration.
"This rule, these fees that have increased will make it extremely difficult for individuals to become legal immigrants, specifically to become naturalized immigrants, to become citizens," Mendez told Cheddar.
The new fees, which are set to be increased in October, will also gravely impact the world's most at-risk populations seeking asylum in the U.S., Mendez added.
"$50 may seem to be a small fee for many of us. We have to understand that asylum seekers leave their countries, they flee their countries with practically nothing," she said.
While news of the increased fees may be looked on as damning, Mendez said the move is on par with the Trump administration's previous moves to eliminate "access to the legal immigration process."
"During the [presidential] campaign, the rhetoric was very much focused on illegal immigration. We knew that that actually meant they were going to attack illegal and legal immigration," she said.
For Mendez, the idea of increasing fees and making the process even more difficult for people who want to become American is a jab at the foundation upon which the country was built.
"When we limit the opportunity for people to be engaged in the process by being citizens, that really undermines our democracy. That really undermines our democratic process," she stated.
The Supreme Court is siding with the Trump administration in its effort to allow more employers to opt out of providing no-cost birth control to women as required by the Affordable Care Act.
The schools filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging the Trump administration’s decision to bar international students from staying in the U.S. if they take classes online this fall.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that oversees student visas, just released new guidelines for international students, which say that if an international student is enrolled in a program that decides to go fully virtual, they must leave the county.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday launched an all-out effort to reopen schools this fall.
Camden, NJ has garnered national headlines after the city replaced its police department with a community based policing program. Cheddar's Michelle Castillo gets an inside look at this alternate type of policing.
The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, although the pullout won’t take effect until next year.
TikTok says it will stop operations in Hong Kong after the city enacted a sweeping national security law last week.
The government on Monday identified roughly 650,000 mostly small businesses and nonprofits that received taxpayer money from a program that likely helped prevent the job market meltdown from growing worse but that also benefited some politically connected firms.
A white woman walking her dog who called the police during a videotaped dispute with a Black man in Central Park was charged Monday with filing a false report.
Stacy Abrams, author and founder of 'Fair Fight,' talks the need to expand vote-by-mail options for Americans as the concerns of voter suppression rise.
