Press Release

Application Fees for U.S Non-Immigrant Visas to Increase On January 1, 2008

December 18, 2007

Effective January 1, 2008, the application fee for a U.S. nonimmigrant visa (NIV) will increase. The new fee for nonimmigrant visa will be Brunei dollars B$196.50 or USD $131.00.  This increase allows U.S. Embassies world-wide to recover the costs of security and other enhancements to the non-immigrant visa application process. 

Brunei citizens holding passports issued before October 26, 2006 may still travel to the U.S. for short business or pleasure trips under the visa waiver program and are not required to apply for a visa.  Travelers requiring visas (e.g. students, specialty workers, citizens of countries not eligible for the visa waiver program) will need to pay the new application fee beginning January 1, 2008.

On December 13, 2007 the Department of State announced that visa fees will increase due to rising costs in visa processing. The Department, and thereby the U.S. Embassy, is required by law to recover the cost of processing non-immigrant visas through the collection of the Machine-Readable Visa application fee. Because of new security-related costs, new information technology systems, and inflation, the current fee is lower than the actual cost of processing non-immigrant visas.  In fact, the current fee was already lower than the cost of processing non-immigrant visas when the fee was reviewed as a part of the cost of service study in 2004.  The Department has been absorbing the additional cost. 

The last application fee increase for non immigrant visas was in 2002.

For further details on the visa fees, please refer to the US Embassy’s official website:
http://brunei.usembassy.gov