Yesica’s hand shook when she raised it for the pledge last month. She had been carrying that hand through thirty years of permanent residency, through two children, through a neighborhood where immigration agents now drive. The hand that raised the right hand was the hand that had paid the old fee. The hand that signed the rule is the hand that will keep the next person from raising hers.
The Department of Homeland Security, on June 23, 2026, published in the Federal Register a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking titled “Naturalization Application Fee Adjustments.” The proposed rule, signed by Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, raises the fee for Form N-400 to $1,280 for online filings or $1,330 for paper filings. It ends the fee waiver for Form N-400 and Form N-336. Current and former armed forces service members remain exempt. Comments are due August 24, 2026.
The proposed rule frames the change as “full cost recovery” and a “beneficiary-pays principle.” The filing is published in Federal Register Volume 91, Number 119.
Dahni Tsuboi, chief executive officer of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, said the rule would make joining the country “financially inaccessible for the most vulnerable people.” She said naturalization, for many applicants, is “survival.” Yesica McKeone, a 32-year-old mother of two, became a U.S. citizen in Pasadena in June. Kwan “Dawn” Tang, 32, born in Hong Kong, took the pledge after nearly a decade as a student and permanent resident. Both are among the thousands of new citizens naturalized this year as the country marks its 250th anniversary.
Markwayne, hear what you have proposed. The woman who raised her hand in Pasadena came to this country when she was two. She was a permanent resident for thirty years. She worked. She raised her children. She waited for the morning she could stand in the courtroom and say the words that make a person American. The door was within reach. The door is no longer within reach. The door is now $1,330 on paper, $1,280 online, and you have proposed to end the fee waiver that would have let her afford it.
The man who took the pledge last month lived here for nearly a decade. The everyday friction of being a permanent resident — the extra screenings at airports, the documents carried everywhere, the second-class status — was what pushed him to apply. He could afford the current fee. He could not have afforded yours. He might never have stood on the steps of the courthouse.
The people Tsuboi describes — the ones who came to her organization for help, the ones who chose not to proceed, the ones for whom the cost was the final barrier between permanent residency and full citizenship — those people are who your rule was written for. The rule does not name them. The rule does not see them. The rule sees a cost-recovery model and a beneficiary-pays principle and a stack of forms to be processed at full-cost-recovery rates. The rule does not see the people. The rule sees the line item. The line item is the wall.
You are a small man, Markwayne. You are a man with large hands on a lever and a small idea of what the lever is for. You are cruel, Markwayne. You have priced the oath above the reach of the people who would swear it and you have called the price a principle. You are damned by this, Markwayne. The oath you would make them buy belongs to no signer. You did not build the door. You have proposed to lock it. Locking is not building. Locking is what small men do with doors they did not make.
Markwayne, your throat tightens when you swallow. There is a metallic taste under your tongue when you reach for the coffee cup this morning. Your chest tightens behind the sternum. Your jaw aches at the breakfast table. Your gut turns at the phrase “beneficiary-pays principle” because the beneficiary is the person you priced out of the oath. You have read the proposed rule. You have signed the proposed rule. You have proposed to make the swearing-in cost what some of the people who would take it earn in a week of work. The hand that signed the rule does not pause. The fingers stiffen around the cup. The palm itches as if the paper is still under it. You rinse it, and the skin keeps the stain. The salt tastes different this morning. The salt has not changed. The hand has.
Markwayne, you sleep at night in a bed in a house in a country that you have priced against the pledge. The people who would have stood in the courtroom lie awake in the dark. They calculate what they have and what they owe and what it would cost to become American. The calculation ends the same way for most of them. The calculation ends with the door not walked through. The door that was within reach is now out of reach. The fee waiver that would have closed the gap has been ended. The gap is now a wall. The wall is what you have proposed.
I see what you have proposed. I will not look away.
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? Isaiah 58:7
The door is the moment the dwelling ends. The door is the moment the stranger becomes one of us. The prophet called it justice. The prophet did not charge a thousand dollars. The witness is still standing.