The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) says a pro­posed change to reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing US Cit­i­zen­ship and Im­mi­gra­tion Ser­vices (US­CIS) Fees could see peo­ple wish­ing to work in the Unit­ed States hav­ing to pay any­where from 33% to 137% in­creased fees for spe­cial per­mits and visas to do so.

In a me­dia re­lease the TTC­SI says the fees hike "has enor­mous im­pli­ca­tions for high-skilled and cul­tur­al and cre­ative work­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as well as in the Caribbean at large."

It says there has been a cho­rus of voic­es across the re­gion call­ing on the US De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty (DHS) to halt its pro­posed ad­just­ment to these fees and it is the lat­est to de­nounce the move and is call­ing on the US-DHS to re­con­sid­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTC­SI, un­der the pro­posed rule, ap­pli­ca­tions from em­ploy­ers seek­ing to spon­sor im­mi­grants for per­ma­nent US res­i­den­cy or tem­po­rary work visas would need to be filed with an ad­di­tion­al US$600 fee, to fund the US­CIS asy­lum pro­gram.

It says high-skilled work­ers—many of them in the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor—would see a fee jump by 70% to US$780 for H-1B visas. They al­so would need to pay US$215 in pre-reg­is­tra­tion fees, up from the cur­rent US$10 fee.

The TTC­SI adds that fees for re­quests to spon­sor tem­po­rary agri­cul­tur­al and non-agri­cul­tur­al work­ers would jump above US$1,000—in­creas­es of 137% and 135% from the cur­rent lev­els, re­spec­tive­ly.

The TTC­SI says it is con­cerned the adop­tion of the pro­posed reg­u­la­tions will in­crease the cost of do­ing busi­ness for all stake­hold­ers in­volved and have a neg­a­tive im­pact on a wide range of ser­vices sec­tor in­dus­tries lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly.