IT WILL COST Barbadians BDS$262 to apply for a United States visa from next year. And, as before, whether you got the visa or not, this fee would not be refunded.

It will apply to all applicants for tourist, student and business visa applications.

On Friday, the United States Embassy circulated a State Department release announcing that the non-immigrant visa application fee would go up from January 1 from US$100 (BDS$200) to US$131 (BDS$262).

In the release, the embassy said the increase would allow the Department of State to recover the costs of security and other enhancements to the non-immigrant visa application process.

The increase applies both to non-immigrant visas issued on machine-readable foils in passports and to border-crossing cards issued to certain applicants in Mexico.

The department stated that the US$100 fee presently charged "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 had been absorbing the additional cost. We are now collecting ten fingerprints from each applicant, and the cost charged by the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] to review those fingerprints no longer allow us to do this."

The application fee has increased twice since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the United States.

The last time was 2002. (PR/SP)