The Annual Asylum Fee Cannot Be Waived: What to Do If You Cannot Pay

Last Updated: August 2026

If you have a pending asylum case, there is a new fee you need to know about. Beginning in October 2025, the government requires an annual fee, currently $102, for every year your asylum application remains pending. The fee cannot be waived, even if you are experiencing financial hardship or cannot afford to pay it.

For many asylum seekers, $102 may not sound like much to someone on the outside. But if you are waiting for work authorization, supporting a family on a limited income, or already paying legal and filing costs, another mandatory fee can create real financial pressure. More importantly, failing to pay it may put your asylum application at risk.

This guide explains how the annual asylum fee works, when it is due, what can happen if you cannot pay, and what steps you can take to protect your case.

At Law Group International, we help asylum applicants across Virginia, Washington D.C., and Maryland understand new requirements and protect their cases before problems arise. Here is what you need to know.

The short answer, stated plainly

The 2025 reconciliation law commonly called H.R. 1 created two new asylum fees and made them non-waivable:

• The asylum filing fee, charged on the initial Form I-589, which is the application for asylum. Before this law, filing for asylum carried no fee at all.
• The annual asylum fee, charged every year your application remains pending.

For both, the statutory language is what controls, and it removes the discretion an agency would normally have. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center, summarizing the fee scheme for practitioners, puts it in one line for the annual fee: there is no fee waiver for it.

This is not a policy that an officer can be persuaded to relax in a sympathetic case. Understanding that distinction saves you from the most common and most costly mistake here, which is waiting for a decision on a request nobody will adjudicate.

What the fee is and who owes it

The annual asylum fee is charged on the calendar anniversary of each year that an asylum application stays pending. It is not a one-time cost, and for applicants caught in the current backlogs it will recur.

The amount was originally set at one hundred dollars and adjusted for inflation to one hundred and two dollars in November 2025. Both U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the immigration courts apply the adjusted figure.

Who owes it depends on how long the case has been pending. USCIS began charging on October 1, 2025 for applications filed on or before October 1, 2024 that were still pending at the end of September 2025. Going forward, it reaches every applicant whose case has been pending a year or more.

The immigration courts collect it differently in one respect worth knowing. The court will not demand payment or enforce it until an immigration judge issues an order setting a deadline and that deadline passes, under the policy memorandum the agency issued in January 2026. If your case is before a judge rather than USCIS, that sequence is the one to watch, and it is a reason to read every notice you receive from the court rather than setting it aside.

What happens if you do not pay

This is the part that changed recently, and it is more severe than most applicants realize.

In April 2026, USCIS published an interim final rule on payment of the asylum fees. Under it, failing to pay the annual fee on time results in rejection of your Form I-589, along with any accompanying request for work authorization, regardless of how long the application has been pending.

Read that last clause again, because it is the trap. Years of waiting do not insulate a case. An application pending since 2022 is rejected on the same terms as one filed last year.

There is a second consequence that compounds the first. USCIS does not refund the initial asylum filing fee on an application it rejects. Money already paid does not come back to fund a refiling.

Translated into daily life, an unpaid one hundred and two dollar fee can cost you the asylum application you have waited years on and the work permit that lets you hold a job legally. That is why the practical advice in the next section is about protecting the payment rather than contesting it. Our guide to the consequences of not paying the annual asylum fee covers the downstream effects in more detail.

The fee waiver that does exist, and the one that does not

Here is where the confusion comes from, and it is a reasonable confusion, because both things are called fees and one of them is waivable.

Agency fees and statutory fees are two different pots

USCIS charges its own fees to process applications. H.R. 1 added separate statutory fees on top of some of those. The law changed nothing about waivers for the agency’s own fees. It removed waivers only for the fees it created.

So Form I-912, the Request for Fee Waiver, is still alive and still worth filing where it applies. It just cannot reach the H.R. 1 fees.

The work permit example, which is the one that affects most asylum seekers

Consider the work permit an asylum applicant files with Form I-765.

For the asylum category, the work permit fees themselves are H.R. 1 fees. The initial permit carries a five hundred and fifty dollar fee, and each renewal carries a two hundred and seventy five dollar fee. Neither can be waived.

For most other I-765 categories, what applies is the agency fee, five hundred and twenty dollars on paper or four hundred and seventy dollars online, and where a waiver is available, Form I-912 can reach that agency fee. It can never reach the H.R. 1 amounts.

Filings that mix waivable and non-waivable fees are an awkward package to assemble. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center warns that the scheme invites rejections at the intake stage simply from confusion over what was and was not enclosed. A filing rejected for a processing error costs the same as one rejected for non-payment.

The standard for a fee waiver on agency fees

Where a fee waiver is available, the applicant generally qualifies by showing one of the following:

• Receipt of a means-tested public benefit
• Household income at or below one hundred and fifty percent of the federal poverty guidelines
• Financial hardship that prevents payment

Documentation matters more than narrative here. Benefit award letters, tax filings, pay records and evidence of the hardship do the work.

A different thing that is also called a waiver

One more source of confusion is worth clearing up, because it sends people down the wrong path entirely.

In immigration law the word waiver usually refers to something else: an inadmissibility waiver, which is legal forgiveness of a ground that would otherwise bar someone from a visa or a green card. Form I-601 and Form I-212 are waivers of that kind.

Those have nothing to do with what you pay. An inadmissibility waiver forgives a legal obstacle. A fee waiver excuses a payment. Searching for asylum waiver will return pages about the first when your question is about the second, and the requirements have nothing in common. If you want to understand the other category, our guide to how immigration waivers work explains it.

Fee waivers before the immigration court

If your case is in removal proceedings, the immigration court has its own fee waiver process, requested on Form EOIR-26A. It survives, with an important limit that took effect through a precedent decision in 2025.

Where a respondent has paid a private attorney, the agency now presumes they do not qualify for a fee waiver, regardless of income or assets, following a precedent decision issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2025. That presumption can be addressed, but it has to be addressed directly, with specific evidence explaining why the person cannot pay the fees even though they are represented.

What to do if you cannot pay

Confirm the amount before you send anything

Fee amounts have changed more than once since 2025. Check the current figure on the USCIS fee schedule, Form G-1055, or the immigration court’s list of forms and fees, depending on where your case sits. A payment for the wrong amount is treated as a payment not made.

Treat it as a recurring line in your budget

The fee returns every year your case is pending, and pending cases are lasting a long time. Applicants who plan for one payment and are surprised by the second are the ones who miss a deadline. Plan for the fee each year instead of waiting for a new notice to arrive.

Look for the waivers that do apply to you

You may not be able to waive the annual fee, but if you are also filing for another benefit that carries an agency fee, that portion may be waivable. For many families, saving money on those fees can make the mandatory fees easier to afford. This is worth reviewing with someone who can separate the two categories on your specific filings.

If the deadline has already passed

Do not assume your case is over, and do not simply file again without understanding what went wrong. What is available depends on whether your case is at USCIS or before an immigration judge, what notice you received, and how the rejection was processed. Get the paperwork in front of an attorney before you spend money on a refiling that may repeat the same problem.

Frequently asked questions

Can I ask for an exception if I truly cannot afford the fee?

There is no exception process for the annual asylum fee, because the statute removed the ability to waive or reduce it. An immigration officer who wanted to help you could not do so. This is why we recommend directing your energy toward the fee waivers that do exist on other filings, and toward protecting the payment deadline.

Does a fee waiver on my work permit cover the asylum fee too?

No. They are separate filings and separate categories of fee. For the asylum-based work permit, the fees are themselves H.R. 1 fees and cannot be waived, and a waiver granted on any agency fee has no effect on what you owe on your asylum case.

What happens to my work permit if my asylum application is rejected?

Under the rule published in April 2026, a request for work authorization filed together with the asylum application is rejected along with it. Since work authorization for asylum seekers depends on the pending application, this is the consequence that tends to hit a household fastest.

My case is in immigration court. Do the same rules apply?

The fee is the same amount, but the enforcement sequence differs. The court will not require payment until a judge issues an order setting a deadline and that deadline passes. The court also still has its own fee waiver process for the filings where waivers remain available, though a presumption now applies against respondents who have paid private counsel.

I already paid and my case was rejected for something else. Do I get the money back?

USCIS does not return the initial asylum filing fee on a rejected Form I-589. That is a strong practical argument for getting a filing reviewed before it goes in rather than after.

Where this leaves you

A fee you cannot waive is not the same as a case you cannot save. The deadlines are fixed, the amounts are small relative to what is at stake, and the waivers that remain available on related filings are frequently missed by people who assume that a denial on one means a denial on all.

At Law Group International, asylum is a core part of our practice, and our attorneys work with applicants whose cases have been pending for years. Khalid Shekib and Daniela Lucena represent asylum seekers across Virginia, Washington D.C., and Maryland, from the initial filing through the hearing. If you are earlier in the process, our overview of how the asylum process works in the United States explains the stages, and applicants whose Temporary Protected Status is ending can review the options for moving toward permanent status.

Before the next anniversary comes around, find out which of your filings can still be waived. Every case is different, and the answer is rarely the same twice.

 

This article provides general information and does not constitute legal advice. Every immigration case is different, and the law may change. For guidance on your particular situation, consult a licensed immigration attorney.

 

Official sources:

• USCIS, Form G-1055 Fee Schedule: https://www.uscis.gov/g-1055
• USCIS Immigration Fees Required by the H.R. 1 Reconciliation Bill, 90 Fed. Reg. 34511 (July 22, 2025)
• Inflation Adjustment to H.R. 1 Immigration Fees, 90 Fed. Reg. 52693 (November 21, 2025)
• USCIS Immigration Fees and Related Procedures Required by the H.R. 1 Reconciliation Bill, interim final rule, 91 Fed. Reg. 22952 (April 29, 2026)
• Executive Office for Immigration Review, Policy Memorandum 26-01, Annual Asylum Fee (January 2, 2026): https://www.justice.gov/eoir/media/1422321/dl
• Matter of Garcia-Martinez, 29 I&N Dec. 169 (BIA 2025): https://www.justice.gov/eoir/media/1410586/dl
• Immigrant Legal Resource Center, HR1 Fees at USCIS and EOIR, May 2026: https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/2025-09/HR1-EOIR-USCIS-Fees.pdf

Last updated: August 2026.